


Starman

by nodere



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I think it's because Denny's exists in a temporal anomaly, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, Squick, There's something patently ridiculous about Allura owning and operating a Japanese restaurant, This is disgustingly self-indulgent, not sorry, romance at a Denny's diner, sex in the desert, that's my thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 143,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nodere/pseuds/nodere
Summary: This is a story about love in unusual places. It’s about healing Shiro’s broken soul and Keith’s journey to find himself. It’s the contemporary AU origin story that begins at 2 a.m. in a Denny’s diner. It might just also be about aliens.





	1. Freak Out, Far Out

**Author's Note:**

> Everything about this is gratuitous self-indulgence and a little ridiculous. I have no shame. 
> 
> 2017-01-13: It may take me a while to update this since my job is kicking my butt, but I made sure to sit down and plot out the entire story with my notes in an actual outline so in case I can't get to it regularly (hint, I can't), I won't forget.

The Denny’s by the airport was one of those liminal spaces yet existing in the world. People came, and people went, their lives in triumph, failure, and mediocrity passing through. These places always had few regulars. This particular Denny’s had two.

Four times a week, a man would come by. Always alone, always after midnight, always staying exactly three and a half hours, ordering the same beverage, appetizer, meal, and dessert, and always leaving the same generous tip. He was predictable, punctual, polite, and notably possessed of a high-tech prosthetic arm and a fading scar that cut across the bridge of his nose from one side of his face to the other. Although not entirely fashionable, he was always stylish, neat, and clean cut. He always asked to be seated in the same booth at the very back of the restaurant.

Usually on those same nights, but apparently unrelated, another young man would show up, although his schedule was less predictable. To the casual observer, he owned one pair of faded black skinny jeans that could likely stand up on their own, a handful of worn graphic t-shirts, and a red plaid button-down approaching threadbare. While he rarely ordered food - some of the wait staff wondered if he ate at all - he always had a pot of coffee and would go through two or three in a night, head down as he typed away furiously on a beat-up MacBook Pro at the counter closest to the kitchen. His hair had not been tended to for some time, and while it was long enough to pull back, it was usually left a sloppy mess of waves and curls.

Like most nights at 2 am, these were the only two patrons, and on most nights, they kept to themselves eventually leaving to go their separate ways.

+++

Halfway through his dinner, Shiro spotted the other late-night regular heading toward him, carrying his laptop and checking for something in each of the booths as he walked past. Sighing, the man plopped down into the booth directly across from him.

_What was this all about?_

He slowly chewed his hash browns as he raised an eyebrow. All he wanted was to eat his dinner in peace. Why did this guy have to come over and bother him? They’d never exchanged a single word in greeting or passing. What made tonight any different?

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, leaning over Shiro’s plate of pancakes to plug his laptop power cord into the outlet on the wall. He was close enough Shiro could smell him, interest immediately piqued. The man reeked of cinnamon, stale cigarettes, warm coffee, and a hint of something chemical, like mothballs, but it was hard to tell for sure.

Tucking a stray lock of glossy black hair behind an ear, the man continued. “Battery’s dead. I forgot to charge it.”

Shiro hummed softly, unconvinced, as he finished chewing then swallowed. “It doesn’t seem I have a choice, do I?”

“Thanks,” came the reply, pointedly ignoring the implications of the rhetorical question. He went back to the counter to retrieve his coffee, and when he returned, opened his laptop and resumed his marathon keyboarding.

Shiro stopped eating and watched him for a while, wondering how old he was. The fingerless gloves were just as ridiculous as the sleeves of that plaid shirt that nearly covered his hands or the gold ring in his nostril. Shiro hadn’t quite gotten over that yet and tried not to stare. Sometimes he would pause for several minutes, crack his knuckles, pick at the small hoops in his ears, chew on his spoon, and then just as suddenly as he’d stopped; he’d start again.

“What are you writing?” Shiro finally asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

The man stopped and looked over at him like he’d grown a second head. He rubbed his nose then shut his laptop. “Do you believe in aliens?”

The hard stare of oil slick dark eyes glinting in the dim yellow light made Shiro squirm in discomfort. He adjusted his position to cover for his reaction. _Do I… what?_ He cut a glare, brows furrowed, questioning that he’d heard him right. “You mean extraterrestrials?”

The other man nodded. “Yeah. We’re not that far from Area 51. I mean, it’s not Roswell, but we’re on the Extraterrestrial Highway. A _lot_ of people here believe in aliens.” He studied Shiro for a moment, in blatant appraisal. Shiro bit the inside of his cheek, feeling a shiver up his spine. His tablemate’s gaze fixed on his right hand, “That’s one impressive piece of hardware you’ve got there.” He looked up again suddenly, meeting Shiro’s eyes. “You’re military, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I mean, I was, and yes. Yes, it is.” He paused, “I guess.” He shoveled a large bite of hash browns into his mouth and looked away as he chewed and swallowed.

The man grinned, the first hint of warmth Shiro had felt from him. He had nice teeth, not perfect, white and mostly straight, but with a slightly off-center midline the way they fit together. “I recognize you.”

Shiro had to admit he’d expected worse, why was he checking teeth anyway? _Stop it._ He shoveled another bite into his mouth, frowning. It was getting cold.

His companion, if he could call him that, continued. “I spent five years there after finishing my master’s.”

 _There? Area 51? Groom Lake?_ Shiro eyed him again, so was that it? This guy certainly wasn’t familiar, _or was he?_ He was sure he would have remembered someone with a face like that. _A face like what, Shiro? What are you trying to tell yourself here?_ Could it be he found this guy attractive? Sharp features, dark eyes, average height, slight build. _Aliens._ “ROTC?”

He nodded.

“What is your degree in?”

“Astrophysics.”

“And what are you doing now?”

“Writing my next book. I work better at night, and this is the best place to do it without distraction. Most of the time.”

“Well, excuse me, but you came over here, not the other way around.” _Wait a sec., are you trying to make him leave?_

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m joking.”

“I got it.” The man smiled again. Shiro couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

“Is your book about aliens?” _Of course, it is, don’t ask stupid questions._

“Yes,” he answered, continuing to scrutinize Shiro, and then after a pause, he suddenly exclaimed, “You’re that pilot who went missing for a year!”

The corner of Shiro’s mouth drew up ever so slightly in resigned distaste. “I am he.”

The other man’s eyes were saucers. He raked his bangs off his forehead, holding his hair back for a moment as he stared. He let his hair go and wiped his right hand on his jeans before extending it across the table to Shiro. “Keith,” and then almost as an afterthought, he added, “Kogane.”

 _You’re that pilot who did all the experimental aircraft testing._ Shiro nodded slowly, keeping his expression neutral with the dawning revelation. A conversation about the military was one he didn’t particularly want to have. He looked at Keith’s proffered hand and then down at his own. He offered the left instead. “Takashi Shirogane. Call me Shiro.”

Keith swapped hands and shook his firmly. “Heh, look at us, gold and silver. Silver and gold?” Keith mused on their names. “No formalities?”

“I’m out.”

“Right, _Colonel_. Okay. So. Shiro,” Keith leaned across the table toward him, “all I have on your story is the interview you did for the Post. What do I have to do to get the rest of it?”

“Nothing. You can’t have it.” Shiro wondered if Keith believed him. He took another bite of hash browns. _Too cold._ He put his napkin up to his mouth and spat them out, hoping no one would notice.

“Aw, come on!”

“Nope. I’d prefer if you didn’t ask again.” He didn’t want to talk about it, especially with a stranger.

Keith pouted. “Fine, I won’t.” He promised, hand over his heart.

Shiro shook his head in amusement.

Keith sighed audibly then turned around, looking for the server who immediately seemed to materialize beside the table.

She looked from Keith to Shiro in keen assessment, her bun so tight it drew the corners of her eyes up, mimicking the plastic cat-eye frames of her glasses. “I’ve been wonderin’ when you two boys were gonna start talkin’ to each other. More coffee? Anythin’ else to eat?”

“Yes on the coffee and could I get him another plate of hash browns, Joy?”

“Of course darlin’,” a small smile played upon her lips. She returned her gaze to Shiro, “Brown and crispy?”

“Uh… yes, ma’am.”

Joy nodded and went off to the kitchen.

“You really don’t-“ Shiro started.

Keith put up a hand. “It’s fine, and I don’t expect anything in return. I’m the one who came over here and bothered you.” He paused a moment, staring intently at the corner of his laptop. “Look. Yes, my battery was dead, but I also just wanted to talk to you. You’re really, really attractive.”

Shiro had been about to take a bite of his eggs, which were also probably cold, but stopped, fork up to his face, mouth open. He shut it and put the fork down, leaning forward, resting his chin on his hand. He wished Keith would look at him. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had complimented him on his appearance. People just didn’t do that to scar-face guys with one arm. “And?” _There has got to be something more to this._

Keith bit, though the look he gave Shiro was cut with mild irritation at the prodding. “ _And_ I would like to have sex with you.” He paused, took a deep breath, and then added, “You don’t even have to tell me anything about yourself. Unless you want to. I just want to fuck you. Or be fucked by you,” he shrugged. “Either or both.”

Shiro looked at him curiously. “You’ve wanted to tell me that all night, haven’t you?” While he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that revelation, he did not doubt the sincerity of it.

“For the past three weeks.”

Shiro’s eyes widened in surprise. _Three weeks?_ “Isn’t this kind of risky? For you, I mean. You don’t know me.”

Keith downed the rest of his cold coffee, never breaking eye contact. “I don’t know you, though I’ve learned more about you within the last twenty minutes than I have since you started coming here. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you before. It’s funny how the brain works sometimes. But let’s be real, how else am I going to get laid at 2 am in a Denny’s diner?”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “There are apps for that.”

“What kind of pool do you think you’re looking at with the late night/early morning crowd?”

He had a point; although Shiro wasn’t sure that trying to pick up a stranger from a Denny’s was any better.

Keith set the mug down with more force than he needed to, splashing the brown liquid down across the Formica surface. He pulled away his shaking hand, nerves getting the better of him. “If you’re worried about it, I’m clean. And I don’t… I’ve never propositioned anyone before, so I’m not entirely sure how this goes if you say yes or no. I mean, if you say no, I’ll go back to writing my book, I guess, and we can pretend I never asked. But maybe we could talk about something else? Unless you want me to leave, or whatever.”

Shiro could not deny he was intrigued. As annoyed as he’d been when Keith first sat down, this was by far the most exciting meal he’d ever had at Denny’s. “Humor me for a moment. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“You look younger.”

“It adds up. You have two options: take my word or ask me for my ID.”

The waitress was back. She set a steaming plate of hash browns in front of Shiro. “Here you go, doll,” and looking at Keith, “And for you.” She set the coffee pot down and took away the old one. “Holla if there’s anything else you need.”

“Thank you. Will do,” Keith said as she turned and left. He pushed the table forward a little and slid out of the booth to tuck one booted foot beneath him. Shiro took the hint and pulled it toward himself a bit, noting that Keith’s black-polished cherry red Dr. Martens were worn and scuffed well past their expiration.

“I believe you. It means that if I accept your offer, I’ll only be fucking around with someone six years my junior.”

“So about what I thought; _you_ could be anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. It’s the gray hair.”

Shiro blew on his forkful of steaming hash browns before taking the bite. “I am aware of this, and?”

Keith shrugged, a slight lift of his shoulders and a tilt of his head, before pouring his coffee. He drank it black.

Shiro pushed the food around his plate with his fork, disrupting the perfect line of breakfast-as-dinner cutting across the ceramic. After a few moments of this deliberate deconstruction, he looked over at Keith again. “You know what? Sure. Why not.”

The tension eased from Keith’s tired shoulders. “We can go to my place. I don’t even have to know where you live.” He pulled out his wallet and dropped two twenties on the table as he slid out of the booth, standing. “You walk here, don’t you?”

Shiro reached out and grabbed Keith’s wrist, gently with his left hand. “Hey now. Sit back down and let me finish my food at least.”

Keith sat back down, at once impatient and looking as if he were about to offer up an apology.

Shiro continued, “Yes, I walk here.”

“Okay, then I’m driving.” Keith packed up his computer and finished his coffee as he watched Shiro finish off his hash browns. He ate them in horizontal rows, cutting through the chaos with the blunt side of the fork and cleaning the plate as he went.

Shiro stood up once he had finished his meal and appraised the money Keith had put down. He handed one of the twenties back to him. “Don’t be excessive.”

“Don’t make assumptions about me.” Keith took the bill and set it back down on the table.

Shiro shrugged. “I wasn’t. I was just doing the math, and you shouldn’t pay for my food.”

“Maybe I want to.”

“… Okay.”

+++

Outside, Keith searched his pockets until he came up with a partially crushed pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. Shiro looked at him questioningly.

“I lost my lighter a few days ago.” Came the reply as he lit up, inhaling deeply.

“Smoking will kill you.”

Keith exhaled smoke through his nose. “Yeah, and it will be painful. I _know_.” For one very brief moment, he felt Shiro’s judgment, but then it was gone, and he shrugged it off. Truth be told, he didn’t know what had possessed him to solicit the other man in the Denny’s. He’d certainly daydreamed about it, but doing it had taken about all the nerve he had. On the other hand, it had been too long since he’d last been laid, and Shiro was built for a good time, thick, but defined. Keith studied the way his clothes fit, clinging to the curves of his flesh, shirt stretching across his pecs and puckering through the center, his pants highlighting the definition in his legs without revealing too much of anything else. Shiro disrobed was likely a very fine specimen, and he doubted even Michelangelo could have done one better. He finished his smoke, dropped the butt to the ground and stamped out the ember beneath his boot. “Come on.”

Shiro followed him to a once red but very faded and rusted long bed pickup with a mismatched cap.

“It’s not locked.” Keith opened the passenger door and climbed in, sliding across the torn and duct taped Naugahyde covered bench that was bolted to the floorboard and looked somewhat less than legal. “The other door doesn’t open.” Then, once Shiro was in, looking downright squeamish and uncomfortable to Keith’s estimation, he pointed down. “That’s where the seatbelt latches.” A crude hole was cut in the back of the bench where the buckle latch poked through.

“I hope I don’t regret this.”

“I’d like to say you won’t,” Keith started as he turned over the engine and shifted into gear, “but as you pointed out, I don’t know you.” He turned out of the parking lot and started down the highway. “For all I know, you’re married to a lovely lady, have two and a half kids, and the great plot twist of this tale culminates in _you_ using _me_ to fulfill your deepest, closeted, homosexual fantasies.”

Shiro frowned thoughtfully. “Fair, but that doesn’t provide much room for _your_ character development. How about we add a second twist. You’re a serial killer. You like big men. Bears. You lure them out to the desert with your irresistible charm, and then, when you have them, back to the ground, just about to cum, you crush their heads between your thighs like a watermelon. Let’s see it play out.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Keith rolled down the window, letting the wind rake through his tangled hair, watching Shiro from the corner of his eye. “I doubt you’re _that_ hairy.”

Shiro snorted and grinned mischievously, leaning back and resting the base of his head on the fixed headrest. “So, why are we driving through the desert anyway?”

“Because I live in a campground.”

Shiro just stared at him and let him drive. Keith was getting used to Shiro’s stare, like that of an inquisitive but easily startled child. It was at once endearing and disarming as if he was having trouble processing the nature of his present reality.

Keith was a very precise driver if a little fast. The truck rode smoothly, and he tried to take care of it at least, even if it lacked in the looks and comfort department. Down some dirt roads and winding between the brush past campers and tents, Keith eventually pulled up to a dilapidated Airstream that looked like it had been abandoned in the 1960s, half- covered with a degrading plastic tarp. Rubble, rubbish, and appliances were outside; debris with various pieces of furniture and rotten insulation lined the length of the trailer in tidy piles. The curled vinyl remains of a NASA decal peeked out from behind the stacks.

Keith cut the engine. “This is it.”

Shiro continued to stare at him. He tentatively reached for Shiro’s hand and squeezed lightly. “Your hand is warm.” He thought he felt a slight quiver before Shiro pulled away, and he wondered if he was going to regret this. _Probably, yes._ “You have to get out first.”

“Oh. Right.” Shiro had forgotten about the door.

Keith slid out behind him and slammed the door shut. When he went to open the trailer, a small brownish-orange cat appeared from beneath the steps and rubbed against his legs. He bent down to scratch behind her ears. “Hey, Red.” After a moment, she took off, and he opened the camper door, holding it for Shiro, who cautiously stepped inside.

Keith entered after him, reaching behind to flip a switch. A single dim light flickered to life, hanging from a wired cable. The trailer was mostly gutted; the interior caps lay stacked outside, and the thin aluminum shell’s interior remained exposed. While an attempt had been made to dispose of the damaged insulation, some bits of it still clung to the shell. The windows were partially opened, and it looked like they were warped out of alignment and couldn’t close anyway. There was no mattress, and where the bed should have been was a pile of magazines, dirty dishes, and laundry, the contents of a singular nomadic existence. The benches that would have served as seating around a table were shoved together at one end. A taped and tattered poster with a Gray on it clung to the interior of the shell above the windows. More clothes, shoes, books, and media including cassettes, vinyl LPs, and Betamax tapes were crammed and piled into the small closet space.

Shiro stepped carefully through the disorder and peered into the bathroom. Keith stood beside him, tentatively placing a hand on Shiro’s back and looking in around him, gauging his reaction. _Regret._ Everywhere there were clumps of black hair and corrosion on the chrome. Shiro stepped back, Keith’s hand sliding around his waist, and looked at him.

“I’m not staying here, and you shouldn’t live here. This is not sanitary. You don’t even have a bed.”

Keith feigned away the dread in his gut, shuddering as he tensed. _You should have aborted this back at the diner. You got him here and now what are you going to do with him in your little shithole?_ “So? I sleep in the truck, and you don’t need a bed to fuck.”

Shiro clasped his hand over Keith’s, “You’re trembling.” He paused, thinking for a moment before continuing, “Look, just give me your keys.” It was a level command, but a command nonetheless.

Keith bristled, “Why?”

“So I can take us to my place. This is disgusting.” It wasn’t untrue, but still rude to say. And then Shiro surprised him, cautiously reaching for Keith’s chin and lifting his face up to kiss before twisting a hand in his mop of hair.

Keith met him, rocking forward on his toes, Shiro’s lips full and soft. Keith grabbed Shiro’s belt, stepping closer and pulling their hips together, his other hand at Shiro’s neck. _So warm._ He was just about to slide his tongue between Shiro’s lips when Shiro pulled away entirely.

“Not in this hovel.” He gently pulled his fingers through Keith’s hair.

“Wow. Way to be a killjoy.”

“Fun ender, yeah, that’s me,” Shiro smirked.

Keith rolled his eyes then kissed Shiro’s cheek before he could move away. “Fine. You can drive, but be kind to her.” He dropped his keys in Shiro’s outstretched hand. Attached to his key ring was a small pewter flying saucer coated in chipped red enamel and a California license plate charm, one of the old ones with the golden sunrise that unsurprisingly read, “KEITH.”

+++

Shiro’s driving was slow and cautious, but he picked up speed once he’d shifted gears a few times and had a feel for the transmission. Keith dropped the satchel containing his laptop on the floorboard and put his feet up on the dash, pretending he was bored. Shiro was silent, and he didn’t really have anything to add, so he finished his cigarette and snuffed it out just inside the rim of the soda can sitting in the cup holder he used as a second ashtray, the actual one full. He’d wanted to call this back at his place, but then how would Shiro have gotten home.

Keith stretched and pulled his hair back into a messy ponytail, looping it through the elastic into a bun. He needed a haircut, but that took effort and required upkeep. This was, admittedly, lazy. He watched Shiro, admiring his sculpted profile and large build. For someone who had disappeared in an aircraft somewhere around 100 kilometers above sea level, and was found a year later out in the desert sans both the aircraft and his right hand, he sure seemed to have himself together, or at least together enough to function. _What happened to you out there?_ There were so many things he could have said or asked, but he didn’t want to break the mood, and he felt oddly comfortable as if they had known each other for a very long time.

Shiro’s apartment was in a relatively new building, constructed in the boom of the last few years. He parked in a tidy lot behind the whitewashed three-story structure and Keith slid out, nearly tripping over a very large black cat as he stepped aside so Shiro could get out. The creature let out a loud “rrrrrrrow!” and swatted at him with the pads of a paw.

“That’s Kuro.”

“Is he…?”

“The neighbors feed him.” Shiro tossed the keys to Keith, who pocketed them.

Keith shut the door and followed Shiro up the wrought iron staircase to a small landing and a second-story door. Unlocking the knob and deadbolt, the door swung open, and Shiro reached inside to flip on the light switch. In contrast to Keith’s hovel, Shiro’s apartment was practically barren and smelled of sheetrock, latex paint, and synthetic carpeting. Vacuum lines striped the floor of the living area, the only evidence someone had been in there. The counter in the kitchenette was empty. Peering through, Keith could see what looked like a bed in the room beyond, which was at least something, but also the only piece of furniture visible. “Are you sure you live here?” he said, only half in jest.

“Yeah, pretty sure.” Shiro left his shoes beside the door, bending down to unlace them. Taking note, Keith stepped on his heels to slip his feet out of his boots, the ends of the laces knotted so he wouldn’t have to tie or untie them. He hadn’t noticed before now, but Shiro’s oxfords were a nearly plum brown. Just a little unique but not overstated. They looked expensive, with leather soles, even. Not that it mattered; the last thing anyone would notice about Shiro was what he wore on his feet. Shiro put his house keys down on the counter and with a jerk of his shoulder, shrugged off his prosthetic arm, letting it drop to the floor. He rolled off the compression liner, rubbed his bicep, and pulled his sleeve down over his stump. “I hate that thing,” he said, wearing a mask of resentment and disgust.

Keith didn’t know what to say, he had already promised not to ask Shiro about his missing year, and that meant not asking about his arm.

Besides what would he have said? “ _So, uh, you lost your arm?_ ” to which he imagined Shiro might have replied in his wry, stoic manner, “ _Well, sometimes that happens_.”

Looking at it, he wasn’t sure if he should pick it up or leave it. Curiosity got the better of him, and he opted for the former. The arm was remarkably light and the joints sophisticated and flexible. It was smooth, hard, but not cold as he had expected, though Shiro had been wearing it, so there was likely residual body heat. He assumed it was myoelectric. Shiro was watching him, eyes slightly narrowed, and he allowed Keith only a few more moments to appraise the device before extending his hand for its return. Keith turned it over, he hadn’t given it much thought, but contrary to what he’d expected since the prosthetic extended up to Shiro’s bicep, he was surprised that Shiro was only missing his hand and about two-thirds of his forearm. Keith tried not to stare, but Shiro had noticed, his face unreadable. The whole night, Shiro had been very careful to touch him with only his left hand, although to all appearances, he had a full range of mobility with the prosthetic. Covering his mouth with both hands, Keith yawned to break the tension.

Shiro suppressed his laughter as he set the arm beside his keys. “You’re cute.”

Keith huffed through his nose in reply.

“Nothing to say?”

“No. It’s not the adjective I’d choose for myself, but if you think so, I’ll take it.”

Shiro walked through the kitchen, Keith following like a dog at his heels. There was nothing else to see. The apartment was eerily stark with no visible personal effects, except what they had brought in with them. When they entered the bedroom, Keith realized that the bed was, in fact, a western style futon and that the one night stand happened to be a milk crate with a square-cut board set on top. A single lamp stood on the board with an iPhone, likely left there intentionally. Shiro placed his wallet beside it and checked for messages. Keith saw there were a few, but he didn’t bother replying and instead just turned the screen off again and set it back down. Shiro turned to him.

Keith’s voice caught in his throat. All the coffee he’d had at the diner had him wound up and jittery with a headache coming on, and coupled with prolonging, it had only served to make him more nervous. He wanted another smoke and maybe a drink. And then Shiro said it.

“I can’t do this, Keith.”

The words were at once relief and horror. Shiro was looking at him expectantly, and he could almost hear the man pleading with him to _say something_. “Are you kicking me out?” was the only thing he could come up with.

Shiro shook his head.

“Okay. Then I’m not leaving.” Decision made. He dropped his bag beside the bed and started to peel off his layers of clothes, pretending not to watch through the veil of his fringe as Shiro quietly went to the closet and changed into sweats. He didn’t have the luxury of pajamas. Not even makeshift ones. He just didn’t own any, or he would have brought something with him. Down to boxer briefs, he climbed into bed, yanking his hair tie off, slipping it over his wrist, and shaking out his hair as Shiro watched before climbing in beside him and turning out the light.

“Maybe I should kick you out.”

“How come?”

“Because part of me wants you. Right now. And the other part of me doesn’t even understand why you’re here.”

Keith could read between the lines, and there was a lot to be read packed in there. “What do you mean? I’m here because of you. I think I like you and maybe if I get really lucky, you’ll want to kiss me again. It had the promise of a good kiss, even though it kind of sucked.” _Don’t get me wrong I still want sex._ He reached for Shiro in the darkness and pulled him over. Keith could not remember the last time he had held someone like this, head and heart heavy on his chest. He rubbed Shiro’s back, feeling him relax. “Maybe I’m not the only one who’s nervous.”

Shiro made a noise in response that was halfway between a snort and a grunt.

_Maybe it’s not nerves but something else._

Keith smoothed Shiro’s hair back, the white shock of forelock surprisingly smooth and soft compared to the coarseness of the rest of his hair. He couldn’t figure out why, right now, at this particular moment, he cared. Anyone else, any other time, place, situation, and he would have been gone by now. He needed to stop thinking about it; he was tired. They both were, and Shiro was doing a damn good job of hiding fatigue. There was no way this man slept well, if at all, Keith could tell that much at least. “Go to sleep, Shiro. I don’t know what happened to you, but…” he trailed off and kissed the top of his head. _You’re safe. If I thought you wouldn’t laugh, I’d tell you to trust me._

“Your hands are cold.” Shiro reached up and took Keith’s right hand in his, kissing his knuckles before letting go.

“You’re still warm.” Keith reached down and pulled the blankets and comforter up over Shiro’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, Keith.” Shiro wrapped his arm around Keith, much like a pillow, tucking his hand beneath Keith’s back, legs entwined.

 _As much for him as me._ Keith ran his fingers along the side of Shiro’s face, over his cheekbone, around the curve of his ear, feeling the softness of his earlobe and the place just behind his jaw. Keith had to check himself and the taut twinge in his loins. This was awfully close from someone who had just a few minutes earlier told him no in fairly definite terms.

They shared the pall of night. _Perhaps this is ultimately what it’s about._ Keith looked at Shiro’s face, traced the line of the white scar that cut across his nose with his index finger, and gently thumbed away the moisture collected at the corners of his eyes. Broken. Keith breathed in deeply, memorizing Shiro’s scent of musk, wheat, and black pepper. Softly, pressing his cheek into the top of Shiro’s head he sang, soft and low, _“Oh can it be the voices calling me… They get lost and out of time…._ ”

Twenty minutes and several melancholic lullabies later, Shiro was finally asleep.

Two hours later, however, Keith was still awake, being tightly cuddled by a veritable tank of a man whose rumbling snores could wake the dead, but he’d managed to get his laptop out and was watching Ancient Aliens, muted with subtitles.

Five hours later, Shiro was still out cold. Keith was not yet even halfway through his re-watch of the first season but had started to drift off to sleep when there was a loud knock at the door. Shiro made a small grunt while Keith chose to ignore it. After all, it was not his home. After a few minutes, however, there was another loud knock, followed by the buzzing of Shiro’s phone. Keith glanced over at the text that appeared on the home screen, “ **M. H.** : Let me in, you jerk! What are you doing in there anyway? Jacking off?” Keith smiled to himself. This was clearly a friend, and for some reason, he was relieved that Shiro had friends, or at least one. He’d wondered about that, mostly because Shiro seemed reclusive, more so than himself, perhaps. He knew he could certainly use a good friend or two.

The knocking started again, and when it did not look like Shiro was going to move, Keith carefully extracted himself from the embrace. He smoothed Shiro’s hair and planted a kiss on his temple. Slipping his feet into his pants, he hiked them up and tucked his boner into the waistband, where it would hopefully go unnoticed. He found his plaid shirt in a pile at his feet and picked it up. He sniffed it. Not good. It was definitely time to do laundry. Oh well. He shook it out, put it on, and only bothering with the button above his pants to disguise his “problem,” made his way to the door. Looking back through the kitchen, Shiro was still a lump on the futon. Quietly, Keith opened the door.

The person at the doorstep had one hand raised to knock again, and when he saw Keith’s face, his light brown eyes grew wide behind his glasses. He ran a hand through his short, sandy hair and backed up a step, checking the apartment number. The expression he wore affirmed his confusion “Uhm… Is, uh…. Shiro here?”

“He’s sleeping,” Keith replied in a quiet voice.

“Not anymore, I’m not,” came the response from the bedroom, and Shiro shuffled into the bathroom, looking once in the direction of the door before disappearing.

“I’m Matt.” The young man stuck out his hand.

Keith looked at it and then took it firmly, “Keith.”

“So,” Matt began, scratching his jaw, “Are you, like…?” He made some sort of gesture that Keith could only assume was a question of fucking. _Awkward._

“No,” Keith answered in a tone to hopefully shut down this particular line of questioning. The black cat from the night before sauntered inside, twining himself between Matt’s legs first and then Keith’s. “Hey. Where do you think you’re going?”

The cat ignored him and wandered through the kitchen, tail high, disappearing into the bathroom after Shiro, where they could now hear the toilet flush and the shower turn on.

“Okay then. So it’s Shiro’s cat after all.”

“I think that cat comes over a lot.”

“Are you saying he’s fucking the cat?” Keith didn’t wait for a response before he turned toward the back of the apartment. “Hey, Shiro, you know you have a guest, right?” he yelled.

No response. Matt laughed. “I guess I’m your problem now.”

“Yeah.” Keith stepped aside, “Wanna come in?”

Matt stepped inside, and Keith shut the door behind him, “Not really. We’re supposed to go get food. He never forgets plans…” Matt scrutinized Keith, “Did you really not…?”

Keith cast him a level glare, exasperated. “We didn’t have sex. We didn’t even make out. He slept like a rock for seven solid hours. He snores, by the way. It’s like a fuckin’ freight train.” He yawned into his arm.

“He didn’t use to snore.”

Keith blinked. “Heh- the more you know.” Actually, he was beginning to wonder what Matt’s deal was. Were they really just friends? He didn’t seem upset, just curious, but curious to the point of prying. Keith wasn’t sure if he liked him and the overprotective trope or not. Were they fuckmates or something?

As if reading his thoughts, Matt replied, “Oh, we’re not like that.” Hands up, Matt shook his head, then stopped and scratched his jaw again. “Sorry. I guess that was kind of rude.”

“Huh?”

“I mean like you’re… never mind.”

Keith set his jaw in irritation. “I’m what?” He took a step toward Matt, half threatening, gauging. Why could some people not just leave it alone? Was he even reading this right? He could feel the tension building across his shoulders. _Stop it, Keith. Let it go._ Going off on this guy would just create problems, and he did not want to start a fight because Shiro’s friend was dumb with words. Matt stepped back toward the door. Keith rolled his eyes. “It’s fine.” _You’ve dealt with worse._

“I wonder why he hasn’t told me about you,” Matt mused, but Keith just stared at him, providing no response. “So, like, Shiro and I were roommates in college.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose a little nervously. “He was the soundest sleeper I’d ever known. He hasn’t been the same since he’s been back. That was about a year ago, I guess. But he was gone for a year before that. Before he came back, I mean.” He paused, scratching the back of his head. “You do know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied.

The shower cut off and the faucet turned on. A loud “RRRRROWLL?” came from the bathroom. “Oh stop it! What did I tell you? If you fall in, you’ll get wet.” Shiro exclaimed through what sounded like a mouth full of toothpaste.

Keith sighed. “All right. I’m going to go. You two have plans today?” He was about to turn to leave when Matt stepped to the side and put out a hand, blocking him, wide-eyed.

“What? You can’t go! I don’t know anything about you yet.”

 _You didn’t answer my question._ He was beginning to feel a bit jealous, although there didn’t seem to be any good reason for it. Matt was just a friend. _Everyone is entitled to friends._ Keith wished he had one himself. He always seemed to destroy friendships, and he’d moved away from the last ones he’d made when he was sent out here from Edwards. Here, he knew no one and no one knew him. Not really. _That would be the theme of this episode in The Life of Keith Kogane_.

“So, you live around here?” Matt clearly had a knack for picking topics.

 _You can’t actually read my mind, can you?_ “Up route 95 a bit. Not too far.”

Matt scrutinized him, and Keith could almost see his brain box working. “There’s nothing out there except a few-“

“I live in a campground.” Keith cut him off before he could continue. His patience was wearing thin.

“Oh! That’s kind of cool. Like do you have an RV or something?”

Keith nodded, and Shiro poked his head out of the bathroom, “It’s a shitty Airstream.”

Keith turned and shot him a murderous glance as he retreated again, but Matt only laughed. The sound of an electric razor came from the bathroom. Shiro was clearly having fun with this.

“Shiro, any home that has stuff in it is a shithole to you,” Matt hollered back.

“This is a real cesspit.”

“Shut up.” Keith yelled back, and then, desperate to not talk about himself he asked Matt, “What about you?”

“I’m across town. My family is from Reno, but both my sister and I are here. Post Air Force living I guess. It’s a strange city. Sometimes I miss being on base.”

“I know the feeling. I was at Groom Lake for five years.” _Why did you offer that up? Do you really want to be friends with this annoying prat?_

“Wait. You- What?”

Keith nodded. “Yep. What did you do there?”

“Coms mostly. I’m surprised I don’t – wait. Wait.” He was talking with his hands again, “What’s your last name?”

The corner of Keith’s mouth pulled up into a slight smirk. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He leaned back, hands on his hips, stretching his back and cracking his spine.

“I would! Come on, man. What is it?” Matt nearly landed a friendly shoulder punch, but stopped and tried to wave it off, clearly unsure of how friendly he could be.

Keith almost burst out laughing. Almost.

Shiro had finally emerged and walked up to stand beside them; clean, smartly dressed, hair combed back and gelled in place. He put his arm around Keith and squeezed his shoulder, looking at Matt. “Kogane.”

“You aren’t joking. SHIT!” His eyes grew wide. “I KNEW IT! I thought I’d heard your voice before somewhere.”

“Your turn for the shower, Keith.” Shiro nudged him with an elbow.

“I’ll shower later. Let Matt ogle me some and ask me stuff I can’t talk about.”

“No, no,” Matt replied. “Man, you are so above my clearance level. But you’re like, _the_ pilot!”

“No, I’m not. More like the _test_ pilot.” Keith shrugged, “I never accepted the commission. I just wanted to be done, really. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it; I’m not suited to the military.”

Matt smothered his amusement and Shiro coughed back his amusement.

“Everyone knew that, but you’re the best we had,” Matt replied.

“C’mon Matt,” Shiro interjected, “we all have to do what’s right for us. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. So. Who’s hungry?”

Keith and Shiro looked at each other. _Maybe for you, but maybe not with your friend here._

“I need to get going,” Keith said, buttoning the rest of his shirt and realizing he was the only one still not put together. Shiro let his hand slide from Keith’s shoulder to rest at the small of his back. He tensed.

At least Matt could take a hint, “I’ll be outside.” He let himself back out to the landing, pulling the door shut behind him.

When the door closed, Shiro turned to Keith, “You’re busy?”

“I’m going to write. I’ve been so unfocused on work lately.” Keith continued, “I should grab my things.” He turned and felt Shiro’s hand fall as he headed back to the bedroom.

Shiro followed.

“You’re not doing anything today. I’ve seen where you live. It’s not like you have chores.” Shiro leaned forward into the room, hand on the top of the doorframe. “I’d like it if you came with us. I’d forgotten he was coming over this morning. It’s been… I’ve been… difficult.”

“You confuse me, but I like you. To be honest, I’m kind of embarrassed.”

“How come?”

 _Where do I start?_ “Shiro… Think about it.” Keith paused, looking Shiro over and stepping in close. He changed the subject, “Your sweater vest is very…” Keith drew his finger down through the center of Shiro’s chest in the soft angora, following with his eyes, and then looking up at him said, “It’s hot.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

He was guilty as charged, but he wasn’t the only one not answering questions. It seemed to be the status quo in this place, One could argue he was just trying to fit in. “I’m tired.” Keith hadn’t removed his hand from Shiro’s chest.

Shiro’s face softened, and he placed his hand over Keith’s. “I kept you up all night, didn’t I?”

Keith pulled away slowly and bent down to collect his things. He stuffed his t-shirt into the bag with his laptop and sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his mismatched socks. “Yeah, but I’ll get over it.”

“If you leave, will I see you again?”

Keith stopped; dropping his hands, sock half on. He looked up at Shiro whose expression didn’t hide the glow of adoration and fear of the unknown that laced it. _What is it you see when you look at me?_ “I’d like that. I’d really like to get to know you.” It came out guarded, but he meant it sincerely.

The cat hopped up on the bed and lay down behind Keith, back pressing into him.

“Hey now! Who said you could get your fuzzies all over my bed!”

The cat rolled over onto his back and looked up at them. Keith smiled and turned to pet the creature, receiving a paw-padded swat in return. “Well.”

Shiro shook his head. “He likes you. I do too.”

Keith searched his pockets for his phone. “What’s your number?” he asked, powering it on and navigating to his contacts.

Shiro took the phone from him and after inputting his info hit call. He handed it back and picked up his own phone as it buzzed to add the incoming number as a contact. “You’d better call me. Today is my one day off, and I’d really like to spend it with you. How much more obvious do I need to be?”

“It’s Tuesday. Where do you work?”

“Allura’s. I’m one of the chefs.”

Keith just stared at him, opened his mouth as if about to say something, then closed it again. “Okay. How about you call me when you and Matt are done with brunch or whatever, and we’ll do something and you can tell me about your job and what your favorite foods are and all those things. It will be domestic. We can compare the details of our very banal lives over five-dollar Starbucks coffees.” He finished tugging his sock on.

Shiro sat down beside him. “That sounds like a plan.” He leaned in. “May I?”

Keith put his arms around Shiro’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. _Is this answer enough?_


	2. Spark the Fusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is terrible at relationships and Shiro can't decide what it is he actually wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah look, now there is an actual cast of characters, and is that the beginning of a plot?

The restaurant sat on the edge of town. To one side was desert and open highway with signs of greeting, population, and billboards advertising the day life and the nightlife. To the other was the road to Sin City. Welcome the rich, the poor, and those in between hoping to find themselves or make themselves or lose themselves. This was a first stop, a beginning, for others an end, the last point out.

Here there was no ephemeral transience and transcendence, the air always thick with secrets and smoke from the kitchen, heavy and dark.

The restaurant itself was a solitary structure, with a sloping, pagoda roof on an incongruous cinder block and brick foundation. It was owned by a tall, dark woman with silvery tides of hair as bright as the moon and eyes that twinkled stardust. Allura had inherited the restaurant from her father and appointed her uncle Coran to manage the establishment, though while she would say over and over that she did this so she could travel and do as she pleased with her life, she remained there. Always.

A master chef, the sushi chef, a single waiter, and a hostess comprised the entirety of the restaurant staff. It was often busy, and they certainly could have used additional staffing, but no new hire ever stayed more than a few weeks.

It had something to do with the nature of the place.

+++

Shiro cut through the pink, buttery flesh, the fine subtlety of the blade carving the salmon into perfect, paper-thin sheets. The purple glow of his prosthetic, temporarily knife-shaped, was faintly visible from in front of the counter. When he was done the blade split into fingers and once again became a hand. He passed the platter over to Hunk.

“Still no word, huh?” Hunk side-eyed Shiro as he assembled the rest of the dish. Shiro seemed barely listening, staring out into the feeble light of the restaurant. “You sure you didn’t imagine this guy?”

“I’m sure,” Shiro replied, measured, short, deep in thought.

“Look, man, you have got to stop reading so much into this. You hardly know him.”

“But I feel like I’ve known him forever.”

“That’s weird.” Hunk placed the garnish on the side just so and nudged it a little with a gloved finger. “Stop being weird, Shiro.”

“I know.” Shiro flexed the fingers of his prosthetic hand and stretched.  _ This is what happens when you give people a chance.  _ The knot in the pit of his stomach was heavy. He couldn’t so much as think about Keith without feeling that tightening in his chest and the pang of emptiness when he hadn’t shown up. It had been an entire day before Shiro had made his bed and found Keith’s phone and a lighter in the covers, probably left since, well, that last kiss. It had been so nice just to have someone there with him.

He was thinking about this when he noticed Pidge clapping her hands in front of his face. “Hey. HEY! Shiiiiro. Wake up.”

He snapped to attention. “I’m awake.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “What is it?”

“Are you okay? You don’t look okay.” She looked up at him, worry creased between her brows.

Shiro shook his head. “No.”

She looked at him a moment, judging, gauging, then shrugged. “Table 10 sends their compliments.”

Shiro tried to smile, but his mouth instead narrowed to a tight line across his face.

Hunk cringed. A day off should have done Shiro some good, but today was Wednesday, and Shiro was even moodier than he had been on Monday. Hunk peeled his gloves off, scratched his cheek, and pulled the bandana off his forehead, setting it aside. He pushed back his thick dark hair, wiped the perspiration off the back of his neck, then went to wash his hands.

Pidge pretended to take no notice of their indifference. “So where did I leave off yesterday?”

Shiro considered a moment, leaning into the counter and resting his chin on his hand, elbow propped. She’d had some sort of strange adventure in the desert a few nights ago and had been relating it back to them in parts after her shifts. He did not doubt it had happened, though her tale of the events seemed, at least to him, somewhat fantastic. “I think the part where this guy came up behind you, pinned you down, and gagged you or something?”

Pidge looked from Shiro to Hunk, making sure she had their full attention. “Right. Well, he wasn’t that coordinated, he really just kind of grabbed my chin and forced my head back,” She imitated the hold on herself as best she could. “Anyway. There I am, and I’m thinking to myself ‘This is it, this must be one of those grunts that saw me.’ I can’t get free, and I can’t kick or bite him, so I just go limp for a moment trying to think of what to do, and he’s like, ‘Hey kid, just don’t scream, and I’ll let you go ok?’ All right, I nod, and he does what he says; he lets me go. For a moment I think he’s talking to someone, but I can’t see a Bluetooth or anything, and then he’s all focused on me again and like, ‘Okay, you’re not supposed to be here and I’m going to make sure they send you home, but you need to do exactly what I say.’ And I’m still kind of in shock and, I know I’m never going to get a straight answer out of this mofo, but the lights are coming closer, and I really don’t want to get caught trespassing since, well, you know?” She paused for a breath.

Shiro nodded, he did know; she’d been in his unit as a communications officer a few years back. Her record was lengthy, but she wasn’t a bad kid. It was full of charges, all of which involved getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. One was high profile enough that she should have been prosecuted, but for some reason, she was not. All of this in pursuit of alien contact. She was convinced her father, who had been pronounced MIA and presumed dead after a failed military mission years ago, was still alive and had been kidnapped. By aliens.

Shiro was never going to escape  _ aliens. _

His thoughts wandered, and he looked out over the restaurant, watching Lance wait tables. The tall, lanky brunette was always trying his best to be charming and sauntered around with a pretense of easy confidence and a cocky grin. Shiro hoped he hadn’t attempted flirting with another customer. That always caused problems. Lance turned to the back, pointing at the platter on the counter. Hunk nodded curtly, and Lance headed toward him to fetch it but was stopped momentarily by Allura before she turned to greet the couple that just walked through the door. That was odd. She almost never worked the floor and must have sent Coran off on some errand, though to be fair, he always seemed to be doing more butlering than managing. Shiro turned his attention back to Pidge, who had already continued her tale.

“-And then he tells me when they ask me for the access code to give it to them, no questions but otherwise to  _ not say a word _ -”

“So what was the code?” Lance interrupted, taking the platter from Hunk. “Did you look it up? What does it mean?”

“I can’t remember!” They all looked at her. “I was so focused on everything else. I tried to write it down when I got home, but,” she shook her head and with a middle finger, jabbed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, “I forgot.”

+++

“You can’t always trust a stranger,” Lance had overheard Hunk say to Shiro just that morning.  _ But if you don’t trust people, you’ll always be alone. _ This difference of philosophy was on Lance’s mind when the most glorious rock star mullet he had ever seen walked through the door.

Mesmerized, he watched it float right up to Pidge, who had just returned to her post, he didn’t even care what it was saying, just - he just wanted to touch it. There was so much volume in those inky-black waves and the-

A clatter came from the counter, and he turned abruptly toward the noise in time to see Shiro, wide-eyed, staring at the mullet, no, the stranger in possession of the mullet.  _ Definitely not my type. _ Shiro walked out from behind the kitchen counter to meet him. Lance could hear snippets of their conversation. Something about an entire week, a lost phone, mysterious radio signals, broken trust, missed evenings at Denny’s diner.  _ You don’t go to Denny’s unless you’re up to some seriously shady shit, you’re an extraterrestrial, or you’re Shiro. What is this even about?  _ Allura asked them to step outside.  _ What is going on? _ Lance was about to ask Pidge when a customer called for him. He turned around to see what it was they wanted.

And then it hit him.  _ This is the guy Shiro’s been crushing on. _

+++

Outside, a gray blanket of clouds covered the sun, and short gusts of wind rushed down the street, carrying the dust and grit of the desert along with it. Shiro followed the trail of deposition down the street with his eyes. The red pickup was parked at the end of the block, a grounding beacon of relief. He hadn’t hallucinated an entire evening with a figment of his imagination, and he wasn’t imagining that person here now. He tried to rationalize his feelings, but that had proven to be a greater undertaking than he’d expected. In theory, he shouldn’t be reading so much into what amounted to a few hours of interaction.

Shiro reached into his back pocket, pulled out Keith’s phone, and thrust it toward him.

Keith stared at it while he rubbed his bare arms, goose bumps betraying the chill.

“I found it in my bed,” Shiro stated as a matter-of-fact.  _ How do you even function? _

Keith’s dark eyes, nearly violet in the daylight, flicked up to meet his.

Shiro wondered what he was thinking, but continued, “I was actually worried! You didn’t come back for your phone, and you didn’t show up at Denny’s. A whole week, Keith! You went MIA for one whole week! You weren’t even home!”

Keith scratched his cheek and pulled his hair back from his face. “I know.”

“Is that all you’re going to say? Come on! You’re here now, so I can probably assume it’s not me?”

“It’s definitely not you,” Keith started. “When I got home from your place  _ last _ Tuesday, I was going to clean up and shower, do some laundry maybe, but I couldn’t find the door to the washer. I was looking for it but got distracted by this signal broadcast that seemed to be coming from farther north in the desert, so I wanted to go check it out, and in the middle of that-“ He stopped himself. “Anyway, I ended up on the base, for a few days-“

_ What?  _ “Wait. How did you lose the  _ door _ to your washer?”

“Well, the latch get’s stuck, and-”

Shiro held up his hands. “Never mind.” He was sure it all made logical sense to Keith, but he didn’t want to hear the rationale behind it, he was too upset. Keeping his voice level was difficult enough.

“I got home this morning, and I was going to call you since I thought it was Tuesday-“

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Yeah, I figured that out.” He pulled the hair tie around his hair from off his wrist. His choppy, uneven fringe fell back over his eyes, and he brushed it to one side.

_ Don’t do that. _ Shiro swallowed, and it caught in his throat.  _ Why do you have to be so damned attractive? Why am I even attracted to you? You look terrible, you need to shave, and I’m not sure you comb your hair. Ever. _

Keith continued as he searched his pockets, “So I went to Goodwill and bought a shirt that smells clean, showered and came over because I thought you’d be here and I owe you an apology.” He found the crushed pack of Camels, tapped one partially out, and took it between his lips before shoving the cigarettes back into a different pocket and searching for a light.

“…So are you going to apologize?” Shiro watched him, sighed, and reached into his back pocket, pulling out a lighter and setting it on top of the phone still in his other hand.

“That’s mine! Where did you find it?” Keith spoke through the cigarette in his mouth.

“In my bed with your phone. It must have been in your bag. You haven’t apologized yet.”

“Oh. Right.” He took both proffered items, letting his fingertips brush over Shiro’s palm. He shoved his phone into a back pocket and lit his smoke, inhaling deeply.

Shiro thought he could see Keith’s hands shaking. He waited.

Exhaling from the corner of his mouth and coughed into his sleeve, Keith tried again. “This is really hard.”

“Yeah. I know.” He paused a moment. “Obviously you care, or you wouldn’t be here.” Shiro crossed his arms over his chest.

“I do. I didn’t mean to make you worry, I just-”

“That’s not good enough, Keith.” Shiro interrupted him, shaking his head as he looked away. What had he expected anyway? “Are you always so cavalier with other people’s feelings?” Keith’s expression was suddenly stricken and what little color was there drained. Shiro continued, “First of all, you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. And then you ghosted. Completely. How can I expect to trust you if yo-”

“Now hold on,” Keith began, “You’re making it sound like we’re dating or some shit. I only just met you-”

Keith was interrupted by the opening burst of the restaurant door as Pidge exited. She looked from Shiro to Keith and back to Shiro. “You’ve been listening to Hunk, haven’t you? Whatever you think this guy did, he probably did it, but I’d trust him,” She pointed to Keith, “with my life.”

“Katie-“ Keith began.

“Pidge!” Shiro exclaimed. “Wait.” He turned to Keith. “How do you know Pidge?”

Pidge replied before Keith could open his mouth. “This is  _ the _ guy,” she pointed at Keith. “The one who covered for me.”

“Believe me,” Keith interrupted turning to Pidge, “you do  _ not _ want to be caught out there doing what you were doing.”

Pidge took her glasses off, rubbed her sinuses, and then replaced them, eyes narrowed. “Who do you work for, really?”

Keith looked at her, questioningly. “Wha-? Myself. I fly aircraft on contract, and I write. I also spent several years stationed there.”

“Well, so did I!” Pidge interjected.

“ _ You _ weren’t supposed to be out there.”

“Oh, and you were?” She scowled, hands on her hips.

Shiro was confused. “Hold on. Rewind. What exactly happened?”

“I was going to tell you, but you said never mind. I went home and figured I’d shower and do laundry and then call you. But I couldn’t find the door to the washer. “ Keith took a deep breath, ready to continue.

Pidge blinked at him, stunned. “You lost the door to your washing machine? How do you lose the door to your washing machine? Who even does that?” she exclaimed.

Shiro raised an eyebrow and pointed at Keith.  _ Him. _ Keith took a long drag on his cigarette. He rubbed his temple before tilting his head back and expelling the smoke slowly through his nose. “It doesn’t latch properly, so until I can fix it, the easiest way to use the thing is to take the pins out of the hinges-”

Shiro cut him off. “How is this even important?”

“It’s not. Anyway. I was trying to find the door, but I kept hearing these...  _ signals _ . I…” He turned to Shiro, “Let me back up a bit. I watch-”

“ _ Hack into _ -” Pidge interrupted.

“ _ Watch _ ,” Keith repeated with more emphasis, “SETI’s Center for SETI Research, rather, more specifically, the ATA.”

Shiro’s lips parted, about to ask when Keith answered the unspoken question.

“The uh, Allen Telescope Array?”

Pidge nodded affirmatively at Shiro.

Keith continued. “So, I had that up and running on my laptop, and it was going crazy, but the signal seemed to be moving purposefully, which was strange, and I decided to go check it out since I had enough data to pinpoint where it was headed.”

“But you left your truck-“

“I took my bike.”

Shiro hadn’t considered that Keith might have another mode of transportation.

“In any case,” Keith continued, “I rode out to the base-”

“Motorcycle bike?” Shiro asked. He did not remember seeing a bike at the trailer.

“Motorcycle bike. I rode out to the base-”

“It was headed toward the base?”

“Yes, sort of. It was just outside the perimeter, but still on federal land. And that’s where I found Katie, I mean,” he paused, “Pidge?” Keith glanced over at her.

“I was trying to get into the CSR mainframe, and you kept blocking me!” Pidge added.

“Your hacking was interfering with my connection! I was trying to decode the signal.”

“I’d already done that. If you would’ve let me talk to you instead of doing whatever weird shit you were doing to keep me out, you would have known that. I just couldn’t send a signal back.”

“Decode what?” Shiro asked.

“The signal?” Pidge replied in annoyed singsong.

“I know the signal, but why? What was it saying or doing that you even knew it could be decoded?”

Pidge answered first, “It was a repeating sequence.” She scrutinized him, “You have seen  _ Independence Day _ , haven’t you?”

Keith face-palmed with both hands. Shiro suppressed his amusement with a rough snort.

“You didn’t have all the parts. You were missing a shortwave frequency.” Keith countered.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

“How do you even know that? Your computer is a piece of shit.” Pidge glared at Keith.

“It is  _ NOT _ -”

Shiro put his hand up for silence, looking from one to the other. “Okay, so both of you hunt aliens and trespass on government land. Got it. Then what happened?”

Keith rolled his eyes and cracked his jaw. “I was not hunting aliens. I was just tracking a signal.”

Pidge looked at him skeptically and licked her bottom lip before shifting her gaze back to Shiro and placing her hand over her heart, “I was definitely hunting aliens.”

“Most of the time those signals are military, you know that, right?” Keith looked at Pidge.

“Yeah. And this one was military  _ aliens _ .”

“Whatever,” Keith muttered under his breath. “Anyway, a patrol found her. “ He gestured to Pidge.

Shiro let out his breath, exasperated, pointing at Keith, accusingly. “ _ You write books about aliens. _ ” He didn’t wait for a response before continuing, “Okay. But then why did you get involved?”  _ You don’t think it was military or you wouldn’t have gone out there. _

Keith puffed on his cigarette a moment, glancing from one to the other. He shrugged.

Shiro studied him a moment.  _ You’re not telling the whole truth. How do you manage to keep your clearance and work for the Air Force? What is it about you specifically that they want?  _ He knew he wouldn’t get the answer he wanted. They weren’t on that level of confidence. Yet. Their spheres might still collide. It was also possible Keith didn’t know himself, though that seemed highly unlikely. Shiro turned back to Pidge. “You didn’t tell me it was Keith.”

“What? How was I supposed to know that this is the same guy who stood you up? You wouldn’t tell me his name or what he looks like. All you said was that he, and I quote, “is very attractive, and he smells like cinnamon.”

Keith shifted his weight and cocked a hip. “I didn’t mean to! First it- I don’t smell like cinnamon!”

“Yes, you do,” came the simultaneous chorus of Shiro and Pidge, standing together, arms folded across their chests.

“Give me a f-” He caught himself before he said it, and reconsidered his phrasing, “I wasn’t able to come back, and that wasn’t my choice, but I should have owned up to my mistake before I left town in the first place. Look. I’m really, really sorry, and that’s why I came here. To tell you that.”

By this point, Shiro had a relatively good idea of where Pidge’s story filled in the gaps of their conversation. He knew, for instance, that Keith had asked Pidge for significant personal information in the few minutes they’d had before the patrol arrived, that he’d made her memorize a series of numbers. He’d called her his assistant while they were held at gunpoint. That most importantly, they’d let her go almost immediately. She had been driven to the gate in a Humvee and sent on her way.  _ This has certainly been a wild ride. _ “And?” Shiro asked. “Is that the only reason you’re here?”

Keith tucked a stray lock of hair behind an ear, finished his smoke, and jammed the cherry into the wall of the building and scraping it along the mortar between the bricks to snuff it out before dropping the butt to the sidewalk. “No. If you’re up for it, I’d like to take you out for dinner.”

Shiro’s face went blank. He wanted a moment to consider. A date might be nice.

Pidge raised a brow at Shiro. “It would be stupid to say no. We’ll cover for you.”

He wondered if Pidge would ever learn to run her words through a filter before spitting them out. “I’m not going to say no,” he replied, “but Keith, that really hurt. A mystery radio signal is more important than keeping your word? I’ll just be frank here, I can’t take that.”

“Believe me, I get it.” Keith closed his eyes and nodded. “So when can I pick you up?”

“Seven. My place.”

“Sure. I’ll be there.”

Keith turned to leave, but Shiro caught his hand and pulled him close. For a very long moment, they stood like that. Shiro hadn’t been able to enact a moratorium on adrenaline, but he had a point to prove and let Keith go just as abruptly as he’d reached out for him.

Eyes glinted obsidian beneath lowered lids, Keith apparently wasn’t going to accept that, placing one hand on Shiro’s shoulder and the other at his waist. He stepped forward, pressing their hips together, backing them into the large front window of the restaurant. “Don’t tease,” Keith said, standing on tiptoe, faces so close their lips were touching as he spoke before their tongues met.

Shiro held him close slamming the firm but supple palm of his prosthetic hand into the tempered glass and feeling the reverberation up through to the back of his head. The burn of anticipation and desire crept up on him, flushing his cheeks and traveling down through his stomach to settle in his loins. It was all he could do to stand still while he tried desperately to sort through the residual anger, sadness, and hurt. His body was saying one thing and his brain another. He shifted forward to try to keep from embarrassing himself, but Keith refused to give ground. There it was, the unavoidable tremor in his groin. He ran his tongue over Keith’s teeth, tasting peppermint toothpaste, burnt paper, and nicotine. Coming up for air, Keith playfully licked the tip of his nose, and he retaliated by pulling out Keith’s ponytail and lacing his hand through that tangle of long hair. Neither of them responded to the loud throat clearing from the doorway, but Shiro turned abruptly when Allura called his name in irritation.

Eye to eye and forehead to forehead, Shiro murmured, “I’d better go. See you tonight.” He adjusted his apron and put a hand in one of the pockets as an attempt to hide his new problem. It had been too long.

Keith nodded. “We’re going to Alizé.”

Shiro quirked a brow. Alizé. This would be a serious date then. He wondered, somewhat unjustly if Keith could afford to eat there or if he’d end up treating, but also remembered Keith was more than willing to overpay for his food at Denny’s. Shiro watched him go, back straight and shoulders squared, more a product of natural bearing than military rigor, and hoped he wasn’t taking a chance on false pretense.

“Hey Shiro,” Pidge rested her hand on his arm, knowingly. “Let’s go back inside.” Under her breath, she added, “Keep him.”

+++

_ Military aliens? Damn straight. _

Keith climbed into his truck, started the engine, put her in gear, and pulled out into the road. That had not gone as planned, but nothing ever did. It was a bad enough coincidence that he had met Matt Holt’s little sister out hunting radio signals in the desert, but it was so much worse that she was the hostess at the restaurant where Shiro worked. That in and of itself was almost enough to have made him walk right back out the door, but he’d had to apologize to Shiro, and despite having done so, he still felt terrible about how the last week had played out. It was some comfort knowing that Shiro wanted him, whether that desire was acted upon or not was another matter, but the basic response was there. Nights had been spent lying awake wondering what Shiro was thinking; would he even want to see Keith again. This crush made his heart hurt figuratively, and his chest hurt quite literally. It was the kind of sick adoration that left a lump in his throat and a hollow in the pit of his stomach.

The thing was, eventually he would have to admit that he didn’t just listen to signals, write books about aliens, and fly aircraft. Signals weren’t always tangible or measurable. Sometimes they came with bursts of energy and chattered away in his head. When he was a child, he had thought he might be crazy. Generally, that’s what having voices in your head that talked back meant. But the voices never went away entirely. They’d be quiet for years and then one day start again. There were five of them, well, five that spoke to each other and that he could sense as a dim din through the labyrinthine trails of his mind. Sometimes, one of those five would speak to him directly. He called that one Red because its voice came with a red aura. He was accustomed to that one and could navigate its moods and quirks. He knew it intimately, and it was party to every processed thought while running around his brainpan.

For a while now, they’d been silent; all of them had up until a week ago, and then it was not the red one who had come to call, but the blue one. This was a new sort of voice, louder, more panicked, pleading, tinged with an urgency that he could not ignore. He’d tried and found he couldn’t; it would have driven him off the wall. That is, if he weren’t already delusional and deranged. Blue had told him what to do, what frequencies to check, where to go, and that Pidge would be out there, only it hadn’t called her that. Instead, it had used a term that was very close to “paladin.” “Green Paladin.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. It couldn’t stop her; it had tried, and Pidge couldn’t hear. In a language he understood implicitly but that he could not define, Blue had told him where to seek the coordinates and what to do with the signal. He knew that if he could decode that, the algorithm would allow him to build or locate something else, something of a fundamental importance but that he would have to keep hidden. Blue would tell him when he could reveal it, but he hadn’t been able to locate it, since interference of the base had jammed his connection. On top of that, Red was missing, and Blue didn’t know where Red was. None of  _ them _ did.

He’d been back and forth from the base a lot. It was what he did to keep himself connected. Part of his contract, one of a few contracts, let him uplink with the Allan Array and the CSR team. He had nearly unlimited access, and mostly it was because he’d had very real results decrypting and analyzing data. There might have been some help along the way from the voices, but no one needed to know that. If he interpreted the communication correctly, and much of it was through feeling, thought, and number patterns, there was something out there that he was supposed to find. The voices, beings, whatever they were, were going to help him do it. They wanted him here, for whatever reason, and they provided him with the tools to achieve that.

Blue had gone quiet once Pidge had been released and he could think clearly again, at least clearly enough to get him through the debriefing. He’d had to do a lot of fast-talking but somehow managed to muddle his way along. After that, they kept him a few days, run the usual tests and evaluations. He’d been scheduled to go in for some flight work anyway, so that had taken up the rest of his time. It was a difficult week to have to explain to anyone. Even someone whom he suspected had lived with aliens for over a year.

Keith pulled into the lot in front of a salon and checked the post-it stuck to his steering wheel. He’d made a list of everything he needed to do and put it where he’d see it. Right at the top was “hair.” He hadn’t had his hair cut since he’d been in the service, aside from trimming it himself when he couldn’t see past his bangs, and at this point, it was beyond out of control. He’d never liked it short, but too long and it was in his eyes and down the back of his shirt. At present, it was definitely too long.

He treated himself to what he hoped was a very good haircut. Still able to pull it back and up off his neck, he counted it a win and crossed the line off his list.

When he got home, Keith made the dinner reservation online, grateful for OpenTable. It meant he didn’t have to talk to anyone and he could just as easily cancel if needed. He still had the good part of the day to figure out how he was going to pull himself together. The first order of business was to find his suit but to do that, he would be forced into some additional cleanup. He found a trash bag in the back of his truck and the laundry basket, while empty, was also easily located, though he did not remember putting it in the kitchen sink. The biggest problem wasn’t a large amount of trash or excessive stuff, Keith didn’t have many material possessions, it was that he had thought he’d have the time, energy, and interest to invest in making all the repairs this camper needed when in fact, he did not. He’d picked it up at a junkyard, taken it right off the hands of the previous owners who had just wanted it gone. The leaks were the worst of the problems, having caused most of the secondary issues including the rotten floorboards, rusted appliances, and burnt out fixtures. It probably wasn’t worth the cost of renovation either.

Keith found his suit in the closet, exactly where it should have been, right next to his dress uniform, and somehow it had remained unscathed despite a slightly musty odor. He’d have to take it to the cleaners. After he located his dress shoes.

He looked around, trying to figure out what he might have done with them. His favorite red boots were by the door. The soles were split, but he still wore them nearly as often as the almost dead and duct taped together Chucks currently on his feet. Neither option was acceptable. He did have nice shoes somewhere, probably.

Keith sighed and started for the pile near the storage under the table when his phone rang. Blindly, he pressed the answer button, just as he slipped and fell backward into and onto a stack of drawers. “Fuck!” He yelled, then remembering he still held his phone, put it up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hey Keith? It’s Pidge.”

Something gave way beneath him, and he crashed loudly to the floor. “Damn it! Yeah? Hey.” He leaned his head back and lay there.

“Is everything all right?” Pidge asked.

Keith looked around at the disaster.  _ No. Nothing is all right.  _ He blew the stray hair out of his eyes, but it just fell back in the same place. He sat up and realized he’d landed on his washer door, which was now bent and would probably no longer fit back on the machine. “No.”

“Why does everyone always tell me ‘no’ when I ask if things are all right? Anyway, I’m calling to check on you.”

“That’s nice.” It  _ was _ even if it did seem odd, and how did Pidge get his number? He looked at his phone a moment. She was calling from  _ Shiro’s _ .

“Can I help?”

“No.” Keith leaned back and lay in the wreckage.  _ Fuck me, fuck my life. _

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yep. Pretty sure.”

“You fell, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” He groaned as he rolled over onto his side. Something had been poking into his spine, and he knew he’d be sore later. It was already later.

“Okay. But if you need anything, call me. I’ll send you my contact.” She paused a moment, “Shiro should probably consider passcode locking his phone. He’s in the bathroom.”

“Look, Pidge, I need to go out. Is there anything else?”

“No. Later Keith.” With that, she hung up.

_ Later?  _ Why did she think she’d be talking to him again later? _ I’ll probably embarrass myself or Shiro in public tonight, and that will be it.  _ Why had he been so short with her? This was why he had no friends.

He was still kneeling in the pile of broken drawers, about to redial when Pidge’s contact came through with a buzz. He added it and called her number.

Pidge answered, “Yes, Mr. Kogane?”

“Help. Please.”

“What do you need?”

“Everything.”

“You have to be more specific.”

“I need a dry cleaner.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I can’t find my dress shoes, or a shirt, or a tie, or-”

“Keith?” She interrupted.

“I bent my washer door.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a walking disaster. Calm down. Take a deep breath.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”  _ That’s the wrong response. You asked for her help. _

Pidge groaned. “ _ Please _ breathe.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“I didn’t hear it.”

He lit a cigarette, inhaled to a count of four, filling his lungs and exhaled. “Better?”

“Stop smoking and do it again. Please.”

He held the cigarette away from the phone and exhaled loudly into it.

“Oh my god. How old are you?”

“Old enough.”

“Where are you?” Pidge asked.

“No.” He couldn’t bear the thought of having someone over, even if it was to help him. He thought he could hear Shiro’s voice in the background. Something about patience.

“Okay… Let me link you to a cleaner, and if you can’t find everything in, say, an hour, you need to go shopping.”

“That was already sort of the plan.” He got up and brushed himself off.

“Good. Oh and Keith.”

“Yes?”

“Call me if you need to.”

“Thank you, Pidge.”

“You’re welcome. Later!” She ended the call.

Keith considered the advice.  _ Deep breaths. Patience. _ He needed to stop and focus. He finished his smoke, but couldn’t find an ashtray, so he killed it in the sink and left the butt there. He wandered into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Afterwards, he’d find the rest of his dress clothes. Now that he’d taken a few moments to consider, he thought he knew where to look, and in any case, he should have a shirt with his Air Force dress uniform. The last time he’d had to wear a suit had been when he’d gone to have a picture taken for the biography on the back cover of his book. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, cringing. He tied his hair back and clipped up his bangs. Somehow, he’d manage.

+++

Keith parked on the side of the road by Shiro’s apartment fifteen minutes early. Maybe in fifteen minutes, he could figure out how to tie a tie. He gave up after five, accepting this was not a skill he had. He gripped the wheel.  _ What is wrong with you? Just calm down, Keith.  _ He could feel his heart racing. This shouldn’t be so hard. He reached into a pocket for his cigarettes and then stopped himself. He knew Shiro didn’t care for the habit.

Could he actually do this? He couldn’t recall having ever taken anyone out on a date that wasn’t a trip to a trash diner, fast food, or a group activity.

Actually, he had once gotten high and taken this guy he’d been boning to a very avant-garde electro-industrial concert he could only remember as a somewhat vague and hazy descent into the netherworld. It had probably been Skinny Puppy, but he wasn’t entirely clear on any of the details from that evening. He was certain he still had the t-shirt somewhere. There had been a lot of screaming, fake blood, graphic footage from Vietnam War, and photo montages of journalistic material on the AIDS epidemic through the mid-90s. The aftermath had been fraught with beer, sex, and the kinds of drugs he’d failed to politely refuse.

Keith climbed out of the truck. Facing the open passenger door, he smoothed his shirt and tucked it in. He was about to grab his jacket when he caught a reflection in the window and realized he was being watched. He turned to find Pidge staring up at him.

“Hey Keith,” she raised her hand in greeting.

Her very presence had Keith feeling defeated, and he hadn’t even made it to Shiro’s door. “Why are you here?”

“I was just checking on Shiro, I’m on my way out.” She turned toward the building and waved up to where Shiro was standing at a window. He had probably been watching since Keith pulled up. The tightness in his throat gripped a little harder. “Well, maybe in a few minutes.” She amended, looking him over. “Can you bend down a little?”

“Why?” He asked, head tilted up, making eye contact with Shiro.  _ Figures. _

She gestured to his ensemble. He looked down, all his buttons off by one. How had that happened? He’d been sure he was capable of dressing himself.

He tensed when Pidge reached up to fix the problem. “Hey, it’s fine. I can do it.” He brushed her hand away so he could straighten out his own mess. Finally getting it right, he pulled his shirt down.

“Can you tie that?” she asked, gesturing to the tie slung around his neck.

Keith looked at her. “No.”

Pidge shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You know clip-ons exist for a reason. You’re on your own.”

_ Always have been _ . He grabbed his jacket from the truck, shutting the door. “I’ll figure it out.” He shrugged on his jacket and looked up to the window at Shiro, no longer there.

“You’ll be fine.” Pidge pulled out a plastic container from her bag.

“What’s that?”

“A boutonniere.” She took the flower, a single red rose, out and fixed it to Keith’s lapel. She patted his arm. “You’re good.” She grinned and walked away down the sidewalk. He watched her go, and after a moment, she pivoted on her heel, continuing backward as she called to him. “Your  _ boyfriend _ is waiting. Tell me how it goes?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Keith rolled his eyes and threw up his hands, but he could feel the heat in his cheeks and knew he was blushing as he left her, walking around to the other side of the building and climbing the stairs up to Shiro’s landing. Taking a deep breath, he rapped twice on the door, right on schedule.

+++

Shiro opened the door, dapper as usual in a light gray suit with matching vest, black shirt, and black and silver tie with thin violet stripe pattern. He had taken care to polish his leather shoes to a high shine. A lavender silk handkerchief was sharply folded and tucked into his breast pocket. A boutonniere matching Keith’s nestled on his lapel. He had styled his hair, the distinguished white lock combed back from his unlined face.

The corners of Shiro’s mouth pulled up in amusement as he assessed the person standing in his doorway. While Keith’s suit was slightly too big on him, it had been beautifully tailored for someone in a charcoal wool with a subdued pinstripe pattern of a single red thread. He wore it like a casual challenge with one shirttail hanging out in the front and his tie yet unknotted around his neck. His shoes were scuffed and dusty, though not so far gone that a little oil and polish wouldn’t fix them. Shiro wasn’t sure what he had expected. At least his date was on time.

Keith just stood there, unintentionally holding his breath and clearly not processing the present. After a moment, he shook his head. “Shiro. You-”

“Are you going to come in?” Shiro cut him off, more abruptly than intended.

“Oh. Yeah. ” Keith looked down for a moment and realizing his shirt wasn’t tucked in, jammed it into his waistband as he stepped over the threshold. Shiro shut the door behind him, right before Kuro could run inside, the cat having suddenly appeared as cats are wont to do.

Shiro placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder; he wasn’t wearing his prosthetic. While Keith’s hair was messy as usual, someone had expertly cut and layered it from his chin to just above his shoulders. Shiro reached out and tucked back a few unruly locks. Better. “It looks really good.”  _ Even if it’s still kind of a mullet. _

“Thanks.”

Keith had even gone so far as to remove his piercings, personal style aside, which Shiro did not want to admit he actually appreciated. Despite an apparent discomfort in wearing a suit, considerable effort had gone into making himself presentable enough for an evening downtown at a five-star restaurant, and Shiro appreciated the significance of that. He took Keith’s tie in hand, “Here, let me.”

“I meant to do that bef-”

Shiro placed two fingers on Keith’s lips for silence.  _ Don’t be nervous. _ “You don’t know how to do this, do you?”

Keith stared at him, and then kissed his fingers. He regretted having to pull them away.

Shiro was remarkably deft with one hand, using his wrist and stump to compensate. “I can show you how, if you want.” He covered a small stain with his thumb, pretending he hadn’t noticed and tightened the knot. Perfect. He patted Keith’s chest, feeling his core warmth and his rhythmic fluttering heart. Shiro searched Keith’s eyes. “Or I can tie it for you again next time.” He winked with a slight lift of one immaculately shaped brow.

He wondered if there would be a next time.

“I bet you’re the dad friend.” Keith blurted out, having once again found his voice.

Shiro laughed, stepping back, “You have no idea.”  _ How did you ever make it through five years in the Air Force? _

Keith checked his shoulders, screwing up his face as he brushed dandruff off before tugging down his jacket. “Shall we?”

Shiro thought he looked more uncomfortable now, if that were even possible. He wasn’t sure whether to offer up a suggestion of diner food and a movie or to see where this was going. He opted for the latter, since it had been Keith’s idea and he wanted to be taken out on a date. He held out his hand, “Of course.”

Keith took it, and Shiro led the way out, Keith taking care to turn the lock and keep out the now crying feline lurking on the landing as he shut the door behind them.

+++

“Have you been to Alizé before?” Shiro asked, trying to find the seatbelt latch, but giving up upon realizing it had fallen through the hole in the bench and would probably take several minutes to locate and pull back up.

“Nope.” Keith rolled down his window before he pulled out onto the road. “Have you?”

“Me neither. Do you-“ Shiro’s phone rang suddenly, and Keith watched him fish it out of an inside pocket. “I should have left this at home.” He looked at it for a moment and after another two rings, answered it. “Hi Kaasan.”

He tried to keep the call short and set his phone to vibrate before replacing it in his suit pocket. “Sorry about that.”

“Why? You’re supposed to answer when your moms call.”

“Wait- How did-”

“You asked your mom about your mom. In Japanese, I might add. Did I miss something?”

Shiro grunted and shook his head. “No. You got it right. I have two moms. What about your family?”

Keith answered after a long pause. “I was a ward of the state of California from the age of three until I turned eighteen. I have never met my mother and my father is institutionalized.”

Shiro stared at him, hearing the agitation in his voice.  _ And you have no other family, do you?  _ “Keith, can I ask-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Keith clenched his jaw and white knuckled the steering wheel.

Reaching over, Shiro patted Keith’s thigh and left his hand there.

“Let’s try a different topic.” Keith’s reply was clipped, and he was focused intensely on the road, but he placed his palm on top and slid their hands up nearly to his hip pressing his fingers between Shiro’s.

“What do you propose?” Shiro squeezed slightly, feeling a twitch in Keith’s groin. He thought he could hear his own heart pounding in his ears, blood rushing to his head, and white haze clouding the periphery of his vision.  _ That’s one way to change the subject. Why do I let you do this to me? _

“Well,” Keith began, just a bit breathy, “I don’t know. Ask me something.”

Shiro leaned over and in a very low voice asked, “How close are we to the restaurant?”

Keith tilted his head toward Shiro, and responded in kind, “About five minutes or so.”

Shiro nodded and tried to pull his hand away, but Keith fought him briefly before letting go in defeat. Shiro shook his head, reaching up and tucking a lock of Keith’s windblown hair behind his ear. He let his fingertips graze Keith’s temple and trace the curve of his ear. Keith leaned into the touch and reached over to take Shiro’s hand and kiss his knuckles, caressing each one with his tongue, still eyeing the road.

“I’m distracting you.” Shiro pulled his hand away again.

“I like this distraction though.”

“I want to make it there alive.”

“You have never had a blow job while driving, have you?”

Shiro glared at him then crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s both an offer and an invitation.” Keith side-eyed him.

He was starting to feel hot and even a bit anxious himself. He had to admit that he found himself attached to Keith, beyond base attraction, and he wasn’t sure why. That second morning when he’d woken up and had to go to work had been the loneliest he could remember in a long time, and there was no good reason for it. Why would he be missing a person he’d just met a day before, with whom he hadn’t even been particularly intimate with unless cuddling counted? He could picture his mothers shaking their heads and telling him he could do better. But could he do better? What was better than someone who was forward but kind, well intended, gentle with the world if not himself, and fiercely unapologetic? He could think of a lot of things. He watched Keith drive.

They pulled up to the door and got out of the car. The restaurant was inside a hotel on the strip. Shiro had been so focused on Keith that he had hardly noticed the passing of the lights and bustle of the city around him. It had always been a strange place to live; the city never slept. Keith handed his key off to the valet, who was having difficulty disguising his surprise at a couple of guys in suits showing up in a decrepit-looking Chevy pickup from the 70s with a busted driver-side door. “Have fun with her. The clutch is soft, the brakes are hard, and she’s a lot more responsive than she looks.”   

They walked side by side. After a few moments, Keith reached over and took Shiro’s hand, tentatively lacing their fingers together. Shiro squeezed his affirmation and did not let go until they took their seats at a small table for two. It shouldn’t have felt like a privilege to be so open about it, but it did, both of them having served through ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’” While Shiro didn’t flaunt his sexuality, he took no particular care to hide it, and from what he had observed, neither did Keith.

The waiter filled their glasses with water left them their menus. Shiro opened his and began to read, pretending to not notice Keith looking past him at a point over his right shoulder.

“You know, this guy has been staring at us since we walked in.”

“People usually do,” Shiro said, unperturbed as he scanned the list of entrees. He thought he might have a filet. If he were to order one anywhere, this would be the place. He glanced over; Keith still hadn’t opened his menu.

“I don’t think it’s because of that. Or your arm,” he added. “He’s huge. He’s got purple hair. He’s sitting across from someone in a gothy black hood veil thing. You can’t miss them.”

Shiro raised a brow in questioning silence, looking up from the menu. He hadn’t seen Keith blink yet, though he’d only been paying peripheral attention. Slowly, he stood, unbuttoning his jacket, an excuse to turn around and take a good look at the offender.

He froze, meeting the man’s eye, for he only had one, the other a blazing orange-red glass orb in a ravaged socket. Shiro raised his hand in greeting, hung his jacket on the back of his chair, and then sat back down.  _ Why is he here and why does that other figure seem so familiar? _ His heart started hammering in his chest and he had to make a concerted effort to calm his racing mind.

“Shiro!” Keith whispered, now staring hard at him. “Do you know him?”

Shiro turned his head to look over his shoulder once more then scooted his chair over to block Keith’s view. “Yes.”

Both of Keith’s eyebrows shot up and he knew he’d have to explain. “He and I...,” Shiro began, “I dated him. Briefly.”

“I think I need a drink,” came Keith’s  immediate reply as the waiter returned for their beverage order. Keith quickly glanced at the wine list. “The Rhone Shiraz.”

Shiro ordered a Riesling.

They ordered their entrees and the waiter disappeared again.

Neither knew quite what to say. The silence loomed pregnant until their drinks arrived. Keith took a rather large gulp of his, while picking at his napkin. Shiro carefully placed his in his lap, smoothing it out meticulously, before picking up his glass.

After a minute, Keith followed Shiro’s example and shoved his napkin into his lap. “So, what’s the deal? Between you and him, I mean.”

Shiro’s shoulders lifted slightly, with a small tilt of his head. “It was terrible. I was in a very bad place.”

“Ha!” Keith looked up from his wine. “I hope you never say that about me,” he mused.

_ Maybe he’ll go away soon?  _ “I think it’s my turn to change the subject. Why astrophysics?”

“Guess.” Keith propped his elbows on the table as he swirled the wine in his glass, following the liquid coat the sides of the glass with his eyes. He took another sip, this time with measured restraint.

“Well, did this come before or after the infatuation with aliens?”

He glanced up at Shiro. “Oh come on! This isn’t 20 Questions.”

“I’d still like to know.” Shiro eyed him, sipping at his Riesling. He wasn’t surprised by Keith’s choice of wine. If anything, he’d expected as much from someone who drank his coffee black.

Keith closed his eyes in thought. “After.”

“You want to be an astronaut.” Shiro’s revelation came with wonder at it having not occurred to him before.

“ _ Wanted _ , but close enough.”

“Why past tense? You’re a pilot. You could absolutely fly a spaceship.” He almost immediately regretted his words as he watched Keith’s expression go from friendly to downright level, eyes narrowed. The flame from the tea light in its crystal centerpiece reflected as purple-tinted catchlights in his eyes.

“I won’t pass the psych evaluation.”

Shiro nodded. That, he could relate to. He understood it to be a rigorous process. Though he did not know what exactly it entailed, he was sure there was a reason Keith was convinced he wouldn’t pass. He wondered if he should ask, but it felt inappropriate. “Well, it’s not like you can’t work in space exploration from Earth.”

“All or nothing, Shiro.”

“Why give up the dream though? Sometimes you have to compromise. Even just temporarily as a means to an end, while you figure out another way to get there.”

Keith parted his lips, about to say something, when the waiter showed up with their salads. Shiro’s came as requested, with extra ranch dressing, and Keith’s with some vinaigrette on the side.

After picking out the cherry tomatoes with his fork and eating those first, Keith resumed their conversation. “I’m working on it.”

Shiro took that to imply Keith’s work for the Air Force was of some import to the space program, which he had long suspected, although nothing of that nature had ever come his way.

“So what about you?” Keith asked. “How did you end up in the Air Force? I still don’t have that story or the one where you tell me exactly how you decided to become a sushi chef.”

Shiro swallowed, reeling in his drifting thoughts. “Well, I’ve always wanted to fly, and when I couldn’t do that anymore, my therapist recommended my current job.” What else could he say? There was so much still missing from that explanation. Upon his return after a year away, there had been no answers to his questions and nothing to help recover his broken memory. Even things in his past that he should have remembered had been fed to him through a collection of documents and computer files, medical records and long nights with his friends rehashing his own life. He could only hope that someday it would straighten itself out and he’d feel less of a stranger in his own skin.

“Where you use sharp, pointed objects on a regular basis? It sounds like a good way to take out frustration.”

“Not really, the fish are already dead.”

Keith burst into quiet laughter. “Fair enough.”

The waiter arrived shortly with soup. “What is this?” Keith asked after he left, looking at the bowl crusted over with melted and browned cheese.

“French onion soup.”

“Onion soup? Who makes soup out of onions?”

“The French. Didn’t you read the menu?”

“No, but I-” Keith stopped, apparently distracted. Shiro looked over his shoulder and watched the figure approach.

A huge, gloved hand thumped on the table. “Why Shirogane. I hadn’t expected to see you here tonight. How have you been?” He thrust his wide face with squashed nose and frosted purple sideburns right up into Shiro’s.

Shiro grimaced, not backing up, but not challenging the invasion of his space either. “Sendak. Hi.”

The man turned to Keith, his one large violet eye searching Keith’s, “And this must be your companion.”

“Well, it’s kind of obvious, don’t you think?” Shiro quipped as Sendak leaned over, Keith following the movement with his eyes, but otherwise remaining perfectly still. Shiro could tell he was gauging his options, making the conscious decision to not escalate the situation if it could be helped.

Sendak pressed his nose into Keith’s hair and breathed in. Keith immediately pushed his chair back and stood up, jamming the top of his head hard into Sendak’s face.

_ The fuck? _ Shiro could tell that Keith was having a hard time controlling himself. The vein at his temple was throbbing, his fists were clenched, and he’d suddenly gone very pale.

Sendak grinned and shook his head, wiping a small trickle of blood from his nose. Face to face, he stood well over half a foot taller than Keith.

“Do NOT touch me,” Keith growled, so low it barely registered to Shiro that he’d spoken at all, teeth bared, canines sharp.

Shiro reached out to Sendak, “You really-”

Roughly knocking away Shiro’s hand, Sendak howled, guttural peals of laughter exuded from deep within. “I never thought you’d go for a twink, but he’s really cute, and you do have a thing for extraterrestrials.”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking about me.” Keith took a step back to open his stance and raised his hand in warning, but Sendak was fast and grabbed his wrist, squeezing and twisting, turning his full attention back to Keith just a moment too late as Keith’s other fist crashed between his eyes with a soft crunch. The glass orb popped right out of his face and landed in Shiro’s bowl of soup, sending an arcing spray of cheese and broth across the front of his vest and tie. Sendak shook his head to clear it, maintaining his iron grip on Keith, while the other patrons watched in stunned silence.

Keith kicked the giant man hard in the groin and was caught surprised when he flinched but did not back down, instead trying to land his own hit on Keith, who managed to duck just as a gloved fist grazed the side of his head, splitting the scalp just above his ear. He turned inward, back now to Sendak’s chest where he used what leverage he could, as fast as he could, to flip him over, yanking his wrist free as Sendak crashed onto the table, collapsing it with his weight.

Shiro managed to dodge the destruction. He stared at the mess and then looked up at Keith, rubbing his chin. Keith glanced from Sendak to Shiro, thick dark blood dripping slowly through his hair from where he’d taken the blow. They watched Sendak’s companion steal away as their waiter approached.

“Are you alright, sir? I saw- he just-”

All of them turned suddenly to the rush of blue into the restaurant. No one was surprised by the fast response. This part of town was crawling with cops. Shiro noticed Sendak stirring at his feet and kicked him.

Hard.

+++

“No, I do not want to press charges,” Keith told the officer for the second time, annoyed, scrubbing at the blood dried on the side of his face with a napkin. “Can I go now?”

“You may leave.” She handed him a card. “If there’s anything else, call me.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He wouldn’t and the officer knew that.

He’d messed this evening up in ways he hadn’t considered possible. He looked back to Shiro, sitting in the lobby, unable to force a smile or wave. Every step toward him came with a dread rush of nausea. Upon reaching him, he met Shiro’s eyes. It was time to admit defeat.  _ Deep breath. _ “Well, shall I take you home?”

Shiro looked up. His expression hardened and he narrowed his eyes. “What? No.”

“I am not abandoning you to take a cab or walk.”

“What makes you think I plan to do either of those things? Right now, I’m sitting. I was waiting for you.”

“I fucked this up, but I’m not leaving you here, so-”

“No, you didn’t. Why do you think that? I would have done the same, only maybe not the part where you flipped him over your head; I’m not that coordinated.” Shiro took the napkin from him, licked it and wiped the blood off his face, examining the side of his head.

Keith groaned. “Shiro, it’s fine.” It was. The wound would probably be healed up by morning.

“Maybe. At least he just clipped you. You could have been really hurt.”

“What? I doubt that. Guys like him think they’re some tough shit just because they’re big and have a lot of muscle mass.”

“I didn’t mean that. I’m pretty sure you just showed me beyond a doubt that you can take care of yourself. I’m just saying if he’d landed that hit, you would probably be in the hospital for head trauma. His left arm is metal. The whole thing.” He looked at the swelling injury more closely before kissing it, crusted hair and all. Keith cringed, but Shiro ignored it and carefully untangled the strands. “I don’t think you need stitches.”

Shiro stood and stretched, taking his jacket and slipping it on, effectively hiding most of the soup stains on his vest and tie. “I do have a question for you though.”

Questions were inevitable. “You’re going to ask anyway. Shoot.” Keith scratched at the wound, knowing he’d answer just about anything Shiro put to him if there were any hope of saving this evening. He doubted that.

“Why would Sendak imply that you’re ‘extraterrestrial’?” Shiro even raised his hand, fingers poised in quotation marks.

Keith lifted his brows and shrugged, throwing up his hands. “No clue. Why?”  _ It is a good question, I’d ask me too. _

Shiro looked around. They were alone. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft, Keith had to lean in to hear. “Because he is.”

Keith waited for Shiro to continue.

“Sendak isn’t human.”

He didn’t know what Shiro was getting at. Was this supposed to be some kind of a bad joke to maybe make him feel better? “Nice try, Shiro. I buy into a lot of weird shit, but this might be too much even for me. He’s a fat punk with one eye, a bad dye job, and a weedy mohawk. Oh, and a fake name. The cop told me his name is Vsevolod. Vsevolod Sendak. I call shenanigans. One hundred percent fakey-fake fake.”

Shiro let out an exasperated breath. “Alien. He picked it because he likes the way it sounds.” He hesitated then continued; “Look, Keith, I still can’t remember most of what happened to me while I was…gone. Okay? But. I can tell you for sure I met him on a ship, somewhere out in space.”

Keith stared at him, agape. Whether or not it was factual truth, Shiro believed it. It was evident in his tone and the glint of uneasy fear in his eyes.  _ Why are you telling me this? _ “Do you really expect me to believe that alien life looks like us?”

“They’re like chameleons. It’s all physical, no mind tricks.” Shiro offered, and then added, “I remember him, and it was definitely him, not some fantastic drug dream hallucination. He said something once about looking for other outsiders and the search for ancient intergalactic weapons on Earth. That’s why he’s here.”

_ Okay… _ “Ancient weapons? What kind of ancient weapons?” There were so many conspiracy theories about ancient weapons on Earth and the moon. He didn’t even know where to begin tackling that one.

“I don’t know.”

“What else?” Keith’s full attention was focused on Shiro now. While he wanted to know everything, he understood that getting this story would have to be on Shiro’s terms. He didn’t even want it for his book; he just wanted to get to know Shiro better, and part of that required understanding where the man was coming from. Shiro had lost a hand, and that had happened while he’d been missing. Something big had happened to him. Keith listened intently.

“Cold cells, no light, stagnant air. Much of it’s just a blackout, and then I’ll recall an image, like a great fanged cyborg beast with talons on its feet and hands and a roiling crowd behind in an arena reaching up far into darkness. I don’t know what any of it means. Is it something that happened to me, or am I just making it up? I tried hypnosis twice, but nothing, and if it’s a cover-up, well, my file is classified, and I don’t have access to it.”

Keith nodded and then asked, “Have you tried neurofeedback?” It seemed the logical next step.

“Not yet. To be honest, I’m not sure I’m ready. The things I recall most vividly are the physical sensations and emotions: excruciating pain, agony, pleasure but like a deep-seated salacious sort of yearning. Some of it is sudden, some lasting for what seems like ages. Distress. Sometimes it’s like having all these very poignant sensory experiences floating around that just won’t come together and make no sense on their own.”

The way Shiro described his jumbled memory was how it often felt when he heard the cacophony of voices in his head, especially if Red was irritated with him and being stubborn and contrary. He may not have had first-hand knowledge of Shiro’s experience, but he could empathize with the emotional disquiet. “Shiro.” Keith laid his arm across Shiro’s back and rubbed his shoulder.

Shiro inhaled slowly then exhaled. He ran his hand through his hair, fingers crunching through product. “I didn’t want to bring that up, I shouldn’t have shared that with you. I know how crazy I sound. Anyway. Sendak. I didn’t know he was still around.” He made a face and scratched his head violently to loosen his hair, the white shock falling forward into his eyes. He tried to blow it away, but it fell right back.

Keith reached up and brushed Shiro’s hair back gently. “I don’t think you sound crazy at all. Unsettled, agitated,  _ discomposed _ , perhaps, but not crazy. I thought that you’d been abducted when I first read your story in the Post last year. I have published two books about aliens. I listen to numbers stations and radio waves for fun. I’m the last person you should be worried thinking you’re crazy. You know what’s  going through my mind right now? I’m wondering what happens next because a week ago, all I thought I wanted was sex, but maybe an hour after I sat down across from you, I’d changed my mind, deciding I could settle for your company and be just as happy. Then, I spent the better part of a week making myself sick thinking about you and not wanting to face the reality of my own shortcomings. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find a phone number; I could have called you from base. We both know that, and I’m not going to stand here and make excuses for myself.” He stood close enough that he had to look up to search Shiro’s eyes. “Crazy hasn’t even registered. You know what  _ is _ crazy? That big purple douche sticking his whole ugly mug in my hair. He fucking smelled me!”

Shiro placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder and put on his most serious expression, sharp brows furrowed. “Keith, you might not have noticed, but you smell really good.”

“So do you.” Keith’s mouth turned up in a small smile, and he leaned in, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper, “I’m also thinking about how much I want to touch you, kiss you...” He trailed off, sliding his arms under Shiro’s jacket and pulled him tightly close.

Shiro twined his fingers in Keith’s hair, pressing his face to the head now resting on his shoulder, “Mmm. I’d like that, but maybe not here.”

“Fair enough.” Keith disentangled himself. “I might also still be processing the fact that you told me you dated that guy. That’s just messed up.” Keith paused biting his lip before asking, “So, does he have, I don’t know, like a tentacle dick?”

“Keith!”

With both hands, Keith pulled his bangs up and off his forehead. “I’m just curious. It’s got to be enormous, and purple! I imagine he-“

Shiro covered Keith’s mouth with his hand, but he was laughing now. They both were. “KEITH!”

He pulled Shiro’s hand away, grinning. “Does it have little sucker-”

“You are so obnoxious! Stop!” Shiro rubbed tears from his eyes, trying to calm down.

“Okay, fine. So you’re coming with me, and we’re not going home.”

“Correct.”

Keith took Shiro by the hand. “I have an idea, but first, I’m hungry, and I don’t really want to go back in there.” He nodded toward the restaurant.

“I don’t either.”

“Let’s grab the truck.”

Shiro squeezed his hand. “Do you mind if I drive?”

“Not really. Any particular reason?”

“I just want to.”

Keith patted Shiro’s arm with his free hand. “It’s all you.” As they walked out, he wondered what would happen to Sendak. He figured someone like that would break out in a day or two, go running from the hospital if they even managed to get him that far. He’d made it to his feet again by the time the police were convinced they needed to cuff him, and Keith had never been so grateful for a video feed before in his life. The best advice he’d ever received was that if he found himself in a situation without an easy way out, always, always, always throw the first punch. And he’d done that. Sometimes it got him in trouble. This time, fortunately, people had already been watching them, either because of Shiro’s missing limb or their entrance holding hands. Afterwards, he had thought for sure Shiro would leave. No one wanted to be around someone who could be so violent. That was on him. He didn’t often misread people, but Shiro was a tough one.

+++

Keith didn’t question Shiro’s ability to drive his truck, He’d already driven it once no problems, but that was with two hands. This time, he wondered exactly how shifting gears was going to work. Two things were in Shiro’s favor, however. First, while the bench that served as seating was fixed to the floorboard, it was bolted in place for Keith, which meant that Shiro, who was significantly larger and several inches taller, was sitting fairly close to the steering wheel. Second, the truck wasn’t likely to stall out if the transitions were rough, seeing as Shiro had to reach across himself and down for the stick.

They had rid themselves of their dinner jackets and accouterments after climbing into the cab, and Keith had tossed their things behind the seat. “I’m cool with you downshifting instead of braking.” He’d visibly seen Shiro tense at the first part and then relax again. “Just keep it below the red line.”

“The piece of tape?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Shiro cranked the engine and pulled out into the road. “Where to?”

“Hmm.” Keith lit a cigarette and cracked the window before rolling up his sleeves up and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt. He’d somehow managed to forget how uncomfortable dress clothes were for nearly four hours, and now that he wasn’t worried about impressions or propriety he wished he’d thought to bring a change of clothes.

“McDonald’s?” Shiro offered.

Keith nearly choked on his smoke. “Yes, let’s! I wouldn’t have guessed you’d want that for dinner.”

Shiro glanced at him. “You-“

“’-don’t really know me.’” Keith finished. “Yeah, I get it. You don’t really know me either.” He hadn’t bothered to fish the seatbelt latch out from under the seat and lay across the bench with his knees up and his head on Shiro’s lap. “But guess what? We’re not strangers. Tell me if I need to move.”

“You’re fine.” He had to lean in when shifting but was otherwise able to compensate. “I think if I ever get a car, I’ll import a right-hand drive.”

“The world is cruel to lefties.”

“No kidding,” Shiro smiled down at him, wryly, “but you’re not left-handed.”

“True fact.”

Keith insisted on going through the drive-thru. The lady at the window recognized the truck, but the driver confused her until Keith sat up to give his order and pay.

“Do you want your burger?” Keith sifted through the bag.

“Yes. Why do they know you at McDonald’s?”

“How do you think I feed myself?”

Shiro looked at him. “There is no way you eat like this every day.”

“It’s not all I eat, but I do have to eat.”

Shiro shook his head. “Fine. So where are we going?”

Keith expertly unwrapped and rewrapped Shiro’s Quarter Pounder and held it up to him for a bite. “Hmm…” he gulped down a mouthful of fries with some iced tea, “Northwest on 95 like we’re going to my place, but keep going.”

“How far?”

“About forty minutes or so.”

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing?”

“Of course not. It’s a surprise.”

Shiro sighed and pulled out of the parking lot. “All right then.”

“I promise it’s not aliens.” Keith offered another bite to Shiro and then resumed his position, head in Shiro’s lap. Reaching over, he turned the dial on the radio, adjusting the signal as it crackled to life. “- _ my loneliness evolves by the blindness that surrounds him-,” _ crooned Bowie from the forty-five-some-odd-year-old speakers.

“What are we listening to?” Shiro asked, with audible disdain.

“Only the most beautiful love song of an era.” Keith picked up mid refrain and sang, “ _ Inspirations have I none _ ,” sweeping a hand across the space above him, fingers outstretched, “ _ just to touch the flaming dove. All I have is my love of love, and love is not loving. _ ”

Outside the windshield, the stars glittered across the night sky.


	3. This Is Not How I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stars and sex and a lion! Oh my!

To behold the formation of a galaxy in the present is to gaze upon an event that took place at some point in the past.

Despite the fact that the universe itself continues to expand at a rate faster than light speed, Special Relativity binds the movement of all objects  _ within _ the universe to the speed of light, a fixed 2.99 x 10 8 m/s. Light from the Sun takes a full 8 minutes and 17 seconds to reach Earth. Observation of space, even within our own solar system is effectively looking back through time.

Starlight is old, and everything everywhere is made of starstuff.

This is an immutable truth.

+++

Keith leaned against Shiro’s shoulder, slowly masticating his fries, mostly succeeding at keeping his mouth closed, but he was distracted, and things like that were sometimes hard to remember. He’d eaten maybe half his burger, and his iced tea was going watery. In contrast, Shiro had downed everything, including his extra-large Coke, and was side-eyeing the remainder of Keith’s meal.

Keith passed over a fry. Just one. He watched the yellow dashes on the asphalt tick by and counted the miles to himself, periodically glancing at the odometer.

“Hmm?” Shiro hummed.

He swallowed. “Pull over after the next marker.”

Shiro nodded and followed the direction, cutting the engine and the headlights. “This isn’t going to be like whatever you and Pidge were up to, is it?” Skepticism and concern skirted the edge of his words as he darted a glance at Keith.

“Shouldn’t be. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.” Leaning forward, hands on Shiro’s thigh and lips pressed to his ear, Keith murmured, “and nobody cares.”

No one was out here  _ to _ care.

He nipped at the other’s earlobe, knowing full well he was picking at the unspoken boundary. Keith just hoped that perhaps Shiro would change his mind, or display a hint of reckless abandon, but that was a thing not encoded in the man’s DNA.

Shiro turned, so they were forehead to forehead. “I thought you didn’t like teasing?”

Putting a finger up to Shiro’s chin, Keith ran a thumb along the strong jawline in tactile pleasure, “Only when I’m the one being teased.” He got the message, however, and let his hand fall before plucking the keys out of the ignition, booting open the door, and hopping out. Dirt and gravel churned up as his feet hit the earth. Resigned, Shiro followed, slamming the door shut behind him.

Keith led the way to the back of the truck, where he propped the cap door and pulled down the back hatch. The extended bed was a second catch all for Keith’s life. The trailer was the first, but this seemed somehow more specific. Moth-eaten packing blankets, a beat-up cardboard box labeled “MREs,” a hard guitar case, what looked like a small but rusty generator, a two-gallon metal gas can, camping gear, a mess of clothes that may or may not have been laundered were stuffed inside around the perimeter of the bed. Strewn about were yellowed and dog-eared tabloids with headlines of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial visitations. Nestled right in the center of the mess, sat a classic motorcycle mounted on a dolly. Keith climbed up and started shoving his things toward the sides and back, clearing out the space around the bike.

Upon returning home from the base that morning, he had intended to go back to the desert to follow the previous week’s signal. Not knowing what equipment he would need, he’d stowed everything he thought might be important, including his bike, into the bed of the truck. His old Chevy couldn’t handle the desert terrain, but the motorcycle wouldn’t be able to accommodate all the gear and equipment required for more than a couple days of off the grid living. He’d done his time in the Boy Scouts and the military; he knew how this went, so he’d compromised and decided to take both. At present, he and Shiro were close to the coordinates he’d deciphered; it would be easy enough to check the location, but Keith wasn’t going to.

Shiro was more important.

The promised metaphorical gold at the end spectrum of mysterious frequencies could wait. Despite his apology, he’d been around the block sufficient times to know that it wasn’t enough to admit his mistakes; he needed to act on self-improvement.

“Uhm Keith?” Shiro shone his phone light up inside.

“Yeah?” came the distracted reply.

“Why do you have dirty underwear in the bed of your truck?”

“Sometimes I wear underwear. Sometimes I change my clothes.” He had no idea what Shiro was getting at. “How do you know that they’re dirty?”

“Whether you wore them or not, you certainly  _ used _ them.”

“Huh.” Keith paused, looking up to see Shiro holding the shorts out, red boxers with gold lions dangling from his forefinger by the waistband like a flag at half-mast. They had definitely been used. “I wondered where those had gone.” Receiving no reply, he added, “I might have been thinking of you.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

Shiro was so good at stoic, too good almost.

“Hmm, let’s see, so I’m lying down, ready to fall asleep, and I’m daydreaming about that really tall beefcake at the Denny’s with the gorgeous eyes, strong features, perfect-”

“Hold up.” Shiro interrupted, “Beefcake?” Shiro’s brows rose to kiss his hairline, disappearing beneath the heavy fringe angled across his forehead.

“Yeah. There’s a lot of you and meat makes the best dessert.” Keith resumed his task.

“Ha!” Shiro scoffed, “Okay. So, what does that make you?”

“Sausage side dish.” Keith offered without missing a beat.

Shiro had no retort, shaking his head slowly, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he tossed the boxers back in the truck.

Keith thought it was clever at any rate. “Come on, I would feel honored if someone told me they thought of me that way.”

Shiro grinned at him smugly. “Oh, I’m definitely flattered, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t leave my messes lying around.”

“ _ My _ mess in  _ my _ truck. That’s not ‘lying around.’”

“That you left knowing I might see it?”

“No.” Exasperation was foremost in Keith’s tone, and despite the amusement, irritation began to grate him from the inside. “When I left home this evening to come pick you up, I had no plans to share the contents of my truck with you. We were supposed to have a nice dinner at a very nice restaurant, and you know, do standard first date stuff, like talk to each other about our very mundane lives, probably kiss, maybe, oh, I don’t know. I thought maybe if I was on my best behavior, I’d get lucky, and you’d let me touch your dick with my mouth and-“ Keith stopped himself.  _ As if it weren’t obvious. _ He bit his lip before he said anything else he might regret.

“It’s okay. I get it.”

Keith smirked. “Do you?” Reaching over and snatching up the boxers, he balled them up and with a quick flick of the wrist, threw them, nailing Shiro right in the face.

At first, he just stared, and the question of misjudgment crept over Keith again.  _ It could very well be our theme.  _ Yet after a moment, Shiro began to laugh, clutching his stomach in a weak attempt to hold it in. “Do you feel better now?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Keith said dryly, schooling his features.

Shiro picked up the boxers and pressed them to his face, inspiring deeply before tossing them back into the truck.

“Okay, now  _ that’s _ gross.” Keith wrinkled his nose, frowning as he leaned against the motorcycle.

Shiro shrugged. “I’m getting to know you.”

“Well, I guess you now know what my crusty spunk smells like.” Apparently, Shiro had at least one kink. He wondered what else he might eventually discover. “You’re going to have to move so I can get this out.”

Shiro opened his mouth to say something but reconsidered. “What can I do?

Keith reached beneath the strata and pulled out a steel ramp, handing it to him. “Hold this.”

“That bike has got to weigh over five hundred pounds.”

“Probably. I’ve never really given it that much thought.” Keith climbed down to position and secure the ramp.

Shiro nodded. “So, what are we doing? I can ask that again, right?”

“The paths are pretty narrow, so we have to take the bike.” Keith sidestepped the question and brushed his bangs back off his forehead. “You cool with that?” He was surprised Shiro hadn’t caught on to what they were going to do.

Shiro regarded him with a studied calm, “I suppose.”

“Good.” After hoisting himself back up, Keith made short work of getting the bike out of the truck and onto the ground, ignoring Shiro’s offers of help and protest. Aside from a dented front fender in brilliant but flaking cherry red enamel, the motorcycle otherwise looked to be in remarkably good condition. Keith disappeared back into the bed of the truck and started rummaging around again.

“That’s a handsome machine you’ve got there.”

“Thanks! 1941 Indian 741B.” Admittedly, Keith was proud of her, even with the cosmetic damage. He’d found the bike in a scrap yard and had taken it off the proprietor’s hands for a minimal amount of cash. Rebuilding and restoring the bike had been a labor of love. He’d also just wanted a motorcycle.

“Those are military, right?”

“Yeah WWII. They made thirty thousand or something. She’s a solid piece of equipment.”

He re-emerged from the bed of the truck, tossing a helmet to Shiro and donning his own. He secured it tight before checking Shiro’s.

“You really don’t-”

Keith shook his head, “At least let me pretend to be a responsible adult.” He grabbed a few blankets, shoving them into the saddlebags before closing and locking up the truck. “There’s really not room for two of us, so you’re going to have to hang on.” He knocked the kickstand up with his heel and swung a leg over in one fluid motion, straddling the engine as he revved it and settling onto the front of the seat. Shiro climbed on behind him, several stiff movements with more than a few apologies. His inflexibility was surprising to Keith.

“Shiro?”

“Hmm?”

“I said hang on.” He reached back and grabbed Shiro’s wrist, drawing it around his waist. “Sit closer and use your thighs.”  _ Just fucking hold me. _ He closed his eyes to clear his head.

Shiro pressed himself up against Keith’s back, grasping him around the waist.

They rode across the packed earth, illuminated by the moon rising behind them. Even in the third quarter, it was bright enough to see across the terrain, past aimless tumbleweeds and the endless sprawl of Joshua trees. While Shiro was little more than dead weight, he proved to be predictably solid in his distribution. Several minutes out from the road, they made their way to stepped rock formations, silver gilt in the moonlight. Keith took the turns tight between the boulders with confidence, winding upward toward a narrow, plateaued outcropping around the edge of a small canyon. At the foot of a steep hill, he stopped, booting down the kickstand and gracefully swinging his leg over the rear of the bike as he hopped off after his companion. Keith hung his helmet over a handlebar. Shiro followed suit, turning toward him.

_ You’ve been so focused on everything else you didn’t even stop to take in the world around you.  _ He pointed up.

+++

Shiro’ face melted into bliss as he followed Keith’s hand to the sky. The night was so clear that he could see the haze through the core of the Milky Way. He drew in his breath, unable to recall the last time he’d stopped to look up at the stars. The sight made him feel small and insignificant. He tilted his head up, overwhelmed by the numerous points of light above, a city in the heavens. Turning around and searching for something to orient himself, he asked, “What am I looking fo-“

A meteor skipped gold through the glistening firmament above him, followed by another in brilliant silvery white.

Shiro grabbed Keith’s shoulder roughly, pulling him back in excitement. “Did you see that?”

Staggering then regaining his balance, Keith rocked forward on his toes as he took Shiro’s hand, blankets under his other arm. “Come on, let’s go up.”

They made their way to the top of the outcropping where Keith spread a blanket on the ground.

Shiro followed each new blaze until it disappeared. He hardly noticed when Keith tugged on his shirt to pull him down and sat cross-legged next to him. “I think there was just another one.”

“Yeah. This is the Orionid meteor shower. It happens every October when we pass by the orbit of Halley’s comet. The radiant’s over at Orion, so if you look over there,” Keith gestured toward the well-known star pattern, “that’s where most of it will start.”

Leaning back on his elbows, Shiro was unable to tear his eyes away. “But I thought Halley’s comet wasn’t going to come around again for another forty-five years or so?”

Keith stretched his legs and lay down on his side. “Yeah. That’s true. When the comet comes through, the heat from the sun causes chunks of rock and ice to break off that sort of persist in the orbital trajectory. The comet itself won’t be back until maybe 2061 I think.”

“I’ve never seen a meteor shower before.”

“Not even while you were… gone? On a different planet or something?”

It still surprised him that Keith didn’t even question him.

“Nope. Not even then.”

Keith rolled over onto his stomach and rested his head on folded arms. “What do you think?”

“It’s absolutely...” Another one passed overhead, his eyes flicked from one burst of light to the next.

“Resplendent?” Keith offered.

“Breathtaking.”

“I love watching the stars. You know that everything you’re looking at has already happened, and you can’t even begin to fathom what is going on right at this very moment.” Their eyes met as Keith paused to study Shiro’s face. “It’s surprising anyone has even noticed we’re here. In another five billion years, our sun will be dead, its final light having blinked out of existence, and mankind long before that. That’s nothing.  _ We _ are nothing, nothing but cosmic dust.  _ Memento homo, quod cinis es, et in cinerem reverteris. Remember man, you are dust, and to dust you will return. _ ”

This star talk didn’t even faze him, the overwhelming wonderment suspended like a cloud in the air. Shiro was convinced he could listen to Keith wax melodramatic over space for days on end.

“What’s it like being out there, really? Do you remember?” Keith asked suddenly, but then amended the request, “You don’t have to answer that.”

Shiro considered the question a moment, then turned his face toward the stars again, “You know, when you’re in space, you no longer have days or nights. Everything exists in the vacuum as part of the void. If you get lost out there, good luck because no one will ever find you.”

“You have all your survival skills and yet nothing to apply them to and you only get so much time. You’re small and insignificant and nothing. I can’t say I felt any differently about my place in the universe out there than I do here.” His words were raw. The feelings hadn’t left, but they hadn’t solidified into discrete memories either. They just  _ were _ .

“Do you think you would ever want to go back?” Keith asked.

“To space?” Shiro looked over at him. He hoped that was what Keith was asking. “I do. I don’t know where I was and I have no recollection of anything outside of the ship. I want to experience it as a traveler. When we finally have commercial space flight available from Earth, sign me up.”

“Me too.”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Sure.”

Shiro hadn’t felt comfortable broaching it earlier, but he’d been thinking about it on and off since Keith had mentioned it. “When you said you wouldn’t pass a psych eval., did you mean you wouldn’t if you had taken it or that you didn’t pass and probably wouldn’t a second time? I’m pretty sure you can apply again. I looked that up while I was waiting for you.”

Keith hmphed. “You’re really sharp, you know that? I didn’t and I won’t. How’s that for an answer?”

“Do you know why?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“I can’t.”

“Does it have something to do with your dad?”

Keith said nothing.

Shiro wondered why he looked so sad. Maybe it was just the contemplative turn their conversation had taken. He lay back, tucking his residual arm behind his head. Reaching over, Shiro nudged Keith’s head to rest on his chest. Keith draped one slender leg over his, all hard surfaces and sharp angles. Shiro hadn’t quite realized how soft he’d become over the last year or so; thicker and less defined. He still wasn’t quite able to figure out what it was about himself this other person, who somehow possessed so much more strength and resilience than his fine features belied, found so interesting.

+++

With little effort, Keith had managed to unbutton Shiro’s shirt and slip his hand inside, fingers gliding across his chest, twisting around a nipple, then drifting along the curve of his breast and squeezing him tight. He buried his nose in where he’d laid his head and Shiro’s arm wrapped around him, grasping his shoulder.

He needed a hug. In truth, he needed more than a hug but would accept the hug as consolation to whet his appetite for some other, future occasion. This being the singular thought on his mind when Shiro reached down and lifted his chin. Happy to oblige and needing no further prompting, he raised himself up to meet the crush of soft lips. Elbows propped at either side of Shiro’s head, Keith’s palms ran over the features of his face, the curve of his jaw, the planes of his cheeks, and the soft ridge of his brow. Scraping nails over Shiro’s scalp, Keith’s fists clenched tight, holding him in place.

Shiro’s hand twined in the hair at the back of his skull and gripped fast, lifting his head up with a puff of breath. “Please?” Shiro’s voice rode the cusp of a tremble.

Keith was unsure of its meaning. Please what? Please stop? Please… please?

Canting back and practically sitting on the other man, he reached behind, listening to the slight shift in his breath. Keith skirted fingertips beneath the waistband, sending quivering waves over Shiro’s flesh.

Testing the waters and gauging response, he ran his knuckles along the rise of Shiro’s cock through the thin wool pants. Keith didn’t have to wonder what it was going to take to get him hard; his body, at least, was compliant. Shiro released his hold to toe off his shoes and unhook the buckle on his belt. In a swift, smooth motion, Keith shucked him of his pants, pushing them to the side as he settled himself between downy thighs, coursing his palms up to Shiro’s hips. He mouthed over the cotton briefs, barely a barrier between his hot, moist breath and the growing erection as a soft moan escaped Shiro’s lungs. Deftly, he hooked his fingers over the elastic and slid them off, uttering a “Goodbye” as he did so.

Keith drew his hands back in, continuing across Shiro’s stomach, soft but firm beneath, digging in with the pads of his digits. Long scars cut chasms through his flesh, and like the one across his face, faded to white with hard ridges along the perimeters. He sat back, relishing in the moment as he appraised the goods, running his tongue over his chapped lips before realizing how hungry that must have made him seem. Shiro was maybe larger than average, but all of him perfectly proportioned, at least to Keith’s estimation. He gripped Shiro’s cock firmly in hand, taking stock of the weight and girth. Something about the fact that neither of them was circumcised pleased him. He lightly rubbed his thumb along the outside of Shiro’s foreskin, eliciting a needy groan.

“Keith!”

He heard his name as if a plea.

_ It’s been too long for both of us. _

Heat trickled down Keith’s esophagus, through his gut, and settled in his loins. Pressing his face to Shiro’s inner thigh with teasing kisses, he reached below, skirting over the outside of Shiro’s rim and perineum before cupping his scrotum and massaging the glands. Shiro’s breath came in ragged rasps, and his muscles tensed, toes spread wide past the edge of the blanket, pressing into the sandy earth through his trouser socks.

_ I’ve hardly touched you. _

Backing himself down, he spat into his palms what he could. Keith’s tongue whisked over Shiro’s entrance and following along his midline before gently tugging at his balls with his lips while slowly beginning to pump him, committing the topography of his body to memory through touch and smell and taste.

Keith glided his lips up the length of Shiro’s shaft as he followed the vein with the tip of his tongue, other hand stroking the prostate from the outside.

He could feel his own desire fighting against the constraints of his clothes, and he tried not to get too far ahead of himself. There was some kind of terrible joke in it that he buried at the back of his mind as his tongue encircled the head of Shiro’s cock peeking through the enveloping cutis. Keith licked the dewdrop of precum from off the slit before moving the foreskin over the head of Shiro’s dick with his mouth.

He took his time if only to make Shiro shiver and beg from mounting want.

“Give it to me, Keith.” was all he heard before taking the entirety of the man within him.

From Shiro’s response, Keith assumed this was going to be quick, moving together and apart, sucking him off. Yet just about to come, Shiro tapped him on the neck.

He pulled his face away slowly, a string of saliva between his bottom lip and the tip of Shiro’s cock, perspiration on his forehead plastering his fringe to his skin. “You’re so close,” he panted, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, about to go back when Shiro tugged on his arm.

“No.” Shiro’s breaths came roughly, but he eased them both up without protest, leaning back on his right elbow, and pulling Keith in for quick but pliant kisses.

Keith yanked his shoes off and allowed Shiro to undress him before returning to his task, this time with his hands. He briefly lamented that neither of them had thought to bring lube, just in case, again going back to saliva. They sat facing each other, his legs wrapped loosely around Shiro’s waist.

When Shiro hesitated, Keith grabbed his hand and licked it, from the heel of his palm to the tips of his fingers. He took two of those digits into his mouth, caressing the pads with his tongue and his lips before pulling back. Shiro traced his hand down Keith’s chin, his neck, sternum, and taut, well-defined abdomen.

Shifting, Keith leaned in, taking Shiro’s hand and directing him around to the back door, his other hand returned to Shiro’s cock, cheek to the side of his head. “I want you inside me,” he murmured.

“I think I can accommodate that request,” Shiro replied, a small smile playing on his lips as he drew his fingers back up Keith’s crack before breaking away again. He shifted Keith’s legs up over his shoulders so he could reach, tucking his other limb beneath him.

Keith pumped himself as Shiro’s tongue caressed his rim, making him wet but not wet enough. He let out a loud gasp as searching fingers worked inside to break him open.

He fixed on the heavens, meteorites trailing through the sparkling brew above. Keith could no longer tell where his focus ended and the night sky began, the splendor of the unknown. To him it was no empty vastness or void, it was instead uncharted and new. The universe contained everything and more than he would ever be able to imagine.

Right now, he was part of that. A gasp burst from him that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Grunts through bated breath punctuated Shiro’s words when he stopped. Shifting again and tucking his feet beneath him, he hauled himself up to his knees, bringing Keith along with him, feet to either side of his hips.

“Hard, Shiro!” Keith bit his lip to keep from crying out, bucking as Shiro entered.

Searing white luminescence blanked out his vision. Hot tears trailed down his cheeks, the pain a blade that cleaved him through.

Keith clung on at Shiro’s nape, over the taper of his hair, and kissed his face hot and wet as they came together.

Sex was God.

Having another person climax inside him? Domination nonpareil. In that instant, he was everything, birthed anew from the primordial earth before the heat settled back in and he could feel the pressure of the world again against his body.

_ Dust. You are dust. _

The great expanse empowered him.

_ “You’re meant to be an explorer. _ ”

The rogue thought came to him from a new direction in a voice not his own, cutting through the nebulous clouds of his electrons and nuclei, sending the particles asunder. It came with crystal clarity, carried on the thread of a whisper across the back of his mind. He gripped Shiro’s shoulder tightly and dug his nails into the flesh.

Shiro’s cum dripped down his shaking thighs, and he blew his load between them, his own white stream of consciousness breaking, laughing as he leaned forward to lick the cream from the end of Shiro’s nose. Keith pushed Shiro back and lowered himself over the man’s chest. They glistened with sweat and grime, the musky scent of their coupling mingling in the air around them. Shiro took his shirt and weakly attempted to wipe up their undignified mess.

“Hold me.” Keith swept his hair away from his face. “You can clean up later.”

“We forgot the condom.” Shiro kissed the top of his head and pulled him close.

“No,  _ you _ forgot the condom.” Keith closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax into this man, who, for some reason unknown, felt like home.

+++

Boot heels connected with the polished metal surface as each step brought him closer to the double doors in the distance, dim violet illumination fanning upward from the brilliant white strip lights lining the perimeter. He walked slowly along on some kind of a bridge or platform. Each panel dipped in nauseating carom from his weight as he continued. The world tilted down, and his own forward momentum impelled him onward. Glowing blue across the floor, his distorted reflection shone off the hard, white carapace of his armor.

“Shiro! Wait!”

The spoken words came as a desperate cry, the distress in his name reverberating across the room. He tried to stop, to turn, but could only continue ahead.

“Shiro!”

He knew that voice but was powerless to do anything but trudge on ahead. He railed at himself in frustration, screaming internally to stop as he approached the door. Blackness skirted the pool of his vision, enveloping everything. Wading through it now, as it swallowed him up, the light from his suit refracted over the sludge. He looked down at his gloved hands, both of them, trailing his fingers through the heavy oil slick.

He recognized the color specifically, but could not place it, and suddenly gravity tore him down, pressing into the small of his back as he fell into the depths, riding his descent into oblivion.

“TAKASHI!”

Shiro shot up in a cold sweat, breathing hard, his heart pounding against his ribcage in irregular palpitations. He looked around, momentarily disoriented by the expanse of the nighttime desert and the wide-open sky. Something about that scenario had felt all too real. He reached over for Keith.

He was alone.

_ Fuck. He fucking did it again. _

But why would Keith leave him alone in the desert?

He hadn’t taken his meds.

_ FUCK. _

What he actually wanted was to kick something, but the rational part of his brain reminded him that focus and results came from calm and patience.

He’d felt safe out here with Keith, comfortable. It wasn’t something he could easily define, and the part that disturbed him was he didn’t know why. By himself, the insecurity began to eat at him once again.

Looking around, some of Keith’s things were strewn beside the blankets, his shoes, his keys, phone, and cigarettes. He clearly hadn’t meant to go far, probably just far enough to take a piss. Why else would he have left his shoes? They were just too far from any sign of civilization. Standing, Shiro walked over to the edge of the ridge. The bike remained parked below, undisturbed, both helmets still hanging off the handlebars.

“Keith!” he bellowed from the precipice, hearing the echo of his voice sound across the canyons. “KEITH!”

Nothing.

He dressed and gathered their things, pocketing the keys, and phone. There was no easy way down except the way they had come up, so he went back to the bike to leave everything else before deciding where to go.

Maybe he really did need to remember those navigation courses. He breathed in deeply and looked up, orienting himself with the moon and the alignment of the fall constellations. He knew some things. It seemed far-fetched, but something was compelling him and pulled at his hesitance. There was no one else out here, and he shook his head, but the thought maintained its grip on him, like the sticky residue of their shame in his hair. He inhaled sharply through his teeth.

Shiro didn’t know where to begin; there were several paths to choose from. Scanning across the line of the horizon, he spotted Regulus centered over one of the trails.

_ The brightest point in Leo. A four-star system in two binary pairs. _

It seemed as good a bet as any. More than that, it felt  _ right _ .

Directional confidence was something Shiro had taken away from his time as a pilot. His innate sense of distance, time, and location was reliable and training had only honed them sharper. He’d never been lost in his life until he’d been abducted.

He could hear his own voice.

_ Don’t get lost in outer space. _

Good one, Shiro.

_ Remember in space, no one can hear you scream. _

Where had that come from? He drew his mind back to the present and shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked the trail. Stone walls lined the path, and he wondered if it were perhaps a relic of some ancient arroyo. It seemed out of use, although how would he know that? When he pulled out his phone light and scoured the path ahead, he could make out Keith’s footprints. At least that’s what he thought the depressions were in the sandy earth. He was careful to avoid them with his own footfalls.

The path wound downward, sloping and serpentine. The farther he traveled, the darker it became, when about half an hour later, hoarse and sore from yelling Keith’s name, the trail ended at the mouth of a cavern. As he peered inside, a light blue glow emanated from within.

“Keith?” He waited several long moments for a reply.

Receiving none, Shiro stepped in and called again, louder this time, the sound reflecting back to him. He stood there, listening. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a scratching and something that resounded like a drip, but there should be no water here, or so he thought. Still unable to make out the form and source of the light, he shone his phone around and started toward it through the darkness.

As Shiro approached, the forms began to clarify into animals and people, faintly illuminated petroglyphs in the rock. He reached out to touch them, feeling the ridges of the scarred depressions in the sandstone and scratching at the light with a nail, expecting to disturb it. When he did so, the light only intensified, pulsating beneath his hand. He dragged his fingertips across the wall as he slowly walked the length, watching the lights flare in intensity. He didn’t know what he was looking at, really, but to him it was the ring of a blue sun, with blazing rays of light beaming to the people below, a group of five, holding swords or sticks or something upward.

Were they warriors? Something about it and the blue-white light made him think of his dream and the shining white armor. It was the same glow he’d seen in his reflection, only here accenting the outlines of the people in the pictographs. In the next image, a giant cat was encircled by the sun ring, which made him wonder if it was a sun at all.

He kept going.

Until he saw the spaceship and froze.

While the carvings appeared old, worn down along the edges with chunks of rock missing here and there, he had to wonder how old exactly they were. The anvil profile of the ship before him was the spitting image of the one that had intercepted him. He’d set his eyes on it, front and center outside the cockpit and remembered the flash of blinding violet before he’d blacked out. How was this even possible? How long had these people been visiting Earth?

Galra. He told himself to call them by name, to own them, to own his experience.

Shiro shook his head and drew himself back to the present, a knot tightening in the pit of his stomach. This place was beginning to make him nervous.

The scratching was coming from somewhere farther on. “Keith!” He called again. He needed to find Keith.

Shiro snapped a picture of the glyph and shone the light ahead again. He had reached the back of the cave, so how come he kept hearing things? Another step and another.

He slipped and crashed down a stone ramp, dust clouds forming and tumbling in his wake before he landed in a shallow puddle. Droplets of water splashed onto the back of his head from stalactites above. For several moments, he lay there before attempting to raise himself up, wincing. Pain shot through his arm as he put weight on his hand; he must have landed on his wrist. Shiro pushed himself up from his elbows instead. His head felt like jelly, and he squeezed his eyes tight to maintain his balance. The light from his phone still shone beside him in the dark. It had somehow survived unscathed, having landed just out of the water. He turned it off and pocketed it.

The blue glow had grown stronger behind him, and as he turned around, his eyes widened in awe-struck astonishment. There, before him in the great hall of the cavern, sat an enormous blue mechanical feline enclosed in honeycomb mesh of the very same light that had drawn him in. He willed his mouth shut with a chin-jerk as he stared. The muzzle of the creature alone was at least four times his height.

“No! Why can’t you just accept my answer? What makes you think this is okay?” Keith’s voice fractured from somewhere behind him.

The sound was muffled, but Shiro made out his words easily enough, whipping his head to the side to look at him. Keith sat there with the small of his back against the wall beside the mesh encasement, face hidden behind his knees and hands pressed against the sides of his head as he rocked himself back and forth. “It’s  _ not _ !  _ I am not! _ Just stop. Stop. Stop. Stop…” he repeated over and over, sucking in his breath in short, frenetic bursts, each exhale a jagged wheeze.

Shiro rushed to his side. “Hey.” He wrapped his arm around Keith and shook his shoulder, ignoring the pain in his wrist. “Keith.” He brushed Keith’s hair away from his face and lifted his head up, a lead weight with no resistance, eyes vacant dark pools.

It made him think of his dream and the great hole of darkness like a slough of tarry filth. He shuddered but immediately pushed the thought away as he knelt, unraveling and pulling Keith close, face into his chest and holding him tightly. “Come on, come on. Snap out of it.” Shiro swallowed back the burn in his wrist and rubbed Keith’s back, fingers over the knob of each vertebra and bend of each rib through the thin, coarse dress shirt. He was good for this sort of thing, providing a modicum of comfort and becoming a shield from the rest of the world.

Keith snorted back a nose full of snot. “Shiro?” He extracted himself, standing and taking several steps away, eyes wide. Perspiration flew off his hair as he pivoted sharply on his heel, dark strands whipping around his face. “ _I told you to stop!_ ” Keith shouted at the mechanical feline, “ _I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. I don’t know where your Blue Paladin is or how to find them. If you can’t give me anything concrete how can you expect me to help you? What even makes you think I will?_ ” Shiro stood, watching Keith attempt to calm himself before the immaculate machine.

The lioness.

The thought hit Shiro hard, nearly knocking him off his feet. His heart thumped in panicked palpitations against his ribcage. It was a lion _ ess _ , and Keith was definitely talking to her. Logical, pragmatic, composed, and emotionally dispossessed Shiro was willing to accept that a colossal mechanical female lion was telepathically communing with Keith.

Pulling his sleeve over his hand, Keith wiped the dampness from his eyes with his cuff. Tentatively, he put a finger up to the illuminated barrier. The light immediately intensified and shifted in surges beneath his touch before he pulled away. He went in for a second attempt, this time pressing both palms onto it. The cast waves rippled out from his hands, flowing together and extending out across the convex shell.

“Shiro?” Keith called to him but didn’t budge from where he stood.

A dim flame winked to life from deep within the cold sockets of the lioness’ eyes.

“Yes?” He approached the barrier next to Keith, adding his palm to it as well. It only shone brighter, and he felt a certain warmth transfer to all five of his digits, coursing from his hand to sear through the pulse of pain in his wrist, edging up through his arm and washing over him. Gritting his teeth, he pressed harder into it, but could not breach the structure. He let his fingertips fall, sliding down the convex surface. “How…” He didn’t know where to begin.

Keith swallowed and sniffed hard, pulling his palms away, light trailing spectral wraiths off his fingertips. “That signal I was tracking? I think this is the place.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and removed a sheet of folded paper, carefully opening it and smoothing the creases out over his thigh. It was an old map of the base and surrounding desert with latitude and longitude coordinates that appeared to have been torn from a book. He tapped at a red-penned circle with an X through the center. “Pretty sure this is it, and here we are.”

Curious, Shiro tried to check the GPS location on his phone but didn’t have enough signal. Replacing it in his pocket, he gestured to the lioness. “She was talking to you.” The strengthening glow of her eyes added to his unease. Something about  _ her _ was familiar.

Keith nodded curtly.

“Does it bother you?” He knew that sounded like an ignorant question, but he didn’t know how far he could reasonably push, and he felt he should say something.

“Yes. It does,” Keith snapped, glowering at the lioness.

“Keith-”

“I didn’t want to come out here tonight. I didn’t want you to think that I had some kind of ulterior motive in bringing us out to this part of the desert.”

He didn’t think that, but he heard the unspoken line behind it all

_ “I want you to understand, this is not how I am.” _

“You left your shoes and walked, what, three miles here barefoot. For some reason, that just doesn’t say ‘ulterior motive’ to me.” He clicked his tongue, holding two fingers up in quotes.

_ It sounds more like, “help.” _

“This is exactly how it happened before;  _ she _ started talking and wouldn’t shut up, like,” he struggled to find his words, “like so much white noise inside my head, and I couldn’t make it stop. When I tried to ignore it, it only grew louder. The last time, it quieted down when I followed, but tonight? It didn’t stop until-” Keith closed his mouth abruptly, cutting his gaze to Shiro.

“Look,” Shiro interrupted, “I’m standing beside you and a giant metal lion with glowing eyes surrounded by the strangest force field I have ever seen. If you say she’s been talking to you and that she brought you here, I’m inclined to believe you. I was kidnapped by aliens. I don’t think this is any less believable.”

Keith nodded slowly. “She’s not talking anymore. I think it’s you.” He finished his previous thought.

“What? How? I didn’t do anything.” Shiro didn’t know what Keith was getting at.

“She said she’d been trying to get you here and that she wanted to talk to  _ you _ but wasn’t sure she’d be able to. She called you, uh,  _ Champion _ .”

“Champion?”

Keith nodded.

“How did you know it was me?”

“Uh, she...” Keith faltered, and pouted, scratching at an eyebrow. “She accurately described you.”

From the awkward delivery, Shiro decided he was best off not touching that response.  _ Champion?  _ Now that did ring a bell, but he couldn’t quite place it. It seemed important though. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Are you sure?” Keith asked. “I don’t doubt you. It just seems odd is all.”

Shiro nodded. He’d felt like he was supposed to come to this place, but no voices spoke to him, and certainly no mechanical lions running around in his head. “I had a feeling I knew where to go, but the only voice I heard was yours when I fell down here.” After a moment, Shiro asked, “What do you think the Blue Paladin is?”

Keith studied the lioness thoughtfully, and then looked over at Shiro. “Her guardian.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see the glyphs down here, did you?” Keith pulled out his lighter and sparked the flame to life as he turned his back to the blue lioness and started down the tunnel.

Shiro followed.

“It’s just up here.”

As soon as Keith had said it, Shiro saw the dim glow of blue again, growing stronger before them as they approached.

These glyphs showed not one, but five separate felines and the same five figures he’d seen closer to the entrance. In another scene, the cats came together like points of a star, and in a third, they had combined to form a giant warrior, melding to form the arms, legs, and head of the being, holding a flaming sword and pointing it upward to the sky.

Keith pointed to the right foot. “I think that one sort of looks like our lioness. It’s the shape of the muzzle.”

Shiro scrutinized it carefully and turned back toward the mechanical feline, still visible in the distance. “Maybe.” It was absolutely the same lioness.

Keith drew his fingers over the outline. The flame in his hand danced shadows across his face. “I wonder if the other four lions are somewhere nearby.”

Shiro took his phone out to snap a picture, but Keith blocked the lens.

“Wait. Let’s not.”

“Why?” Shiro asked.

“It’s not secure, and you don’t know who might be watching.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t be paranoid.” Shiro pulled his hand and phone away, dropping it when the pain spiked again through his wrist. He bent over to pick it up, but Keith was faster, grabbing Shiro’s arm above the swollen wrist.

“What did you do?”

“I landed on it when I fell.” He pulled his hand back, embarrassed. It would be him; the person with one hand would be the one to damage his.

“Shiro…” Keith let him go and reached down for the dropped phone, handing it to him. “Look, I just think this is a very bad idea. Please don’t?”

He wasn’t going to mention he’d already taken a picture back near the entrance. “So, what do you think we should do?” He wanted to hear Keith’s take before offering up his own.

Keith’s shoulders rose and fell. “Honestly? We should probably just leave and pretend we were never here. Anyone we tell is just going to think we’re crazy.”

“That’s probably true, but aren’t you curious?” Shiro wanted to know where she came from and who had made her. Why was she here? Was Keith not interested in those things too?

“Of course, I am, but I don’t think we can do anything else right now. Maybe we could come back with the proper equipment, get some samples and see if they can be dated, but even that carries risk of exposure. She,” he jabbed his finger in the direction of the lioness, “is sentient. I don’t feel comfortable doing anything and I’m not convinced doing nothing is a wrong decision in this case. If we tell anyone now, we can’t un-tell them later. We need to think about this. Someone hid her down here for a reason, or she hid herself. I wonder how long she’s been down here. How did she even get in?”

Keith included him; they were in it together. It felt natural and strange at the same time. “No idea.” He studied the pictures on the wall. There was something familiar about them. His anxiety had all but vanished; it was like rediscovering something he’d known but forgotten, only he was still unable to sift through the cobwebs to the first recollection. “I bet they fly.”

“Who ever heard of flying lions?” The glance Keith shot him, brow quirked and mouth turned up in a small smirk, told him he was thinking the same thing.

“That one,” he pointed to the lion in the middle of the star formation, larger than the rest with what looked almost like a mane the way the head and neck were depicted. “It has wings.”

Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Keith traced the image in front of him with his index finger, immediately to the left of the winged lion. Shiro noted that it was smaller and streamlined; it was the one that formed the right arm of the composite warrior, the jaw that gripped the hilt of the blazing sword.

_ Right-hand man. _

“Do you think it’s a weapon?” Keith asked.

_ Sendak was looking for a weapon.  _ Shiro shuddered involuntarily at the thought and didn’t answer. His wrist throbbed in discomfort. “Let’s go.” He frowned. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent an entire evening giggling with a friend over such glorious phrases as "dewy eyes" and "downy thighs." In other words, if you're laughing at my word choices, chances are high, I am too. 
> 
> I own all my mistakes - Please feel free to tell me if there are things I need to fix. 
> 
> I need a beta.


	4. Lunar Anomalies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard making friends, and Lance is embarrassing.

There is no dark side of the moon, really.

As a matter of fact, it’s all dark.

\- Pink Floyd. “Eclipse.” 1973.  _ The Dark Side of the Moon _ .

+++

High above, the moon descended from meridian, illuminating the courtyard of the apartment complex as dawn approached. They trudged together up the stairs to the second floor. Standing on the landing outside the door, Keith bent over, one hand groping deep in Shiro’s pants pocket for the keys while the other supported the ice pack around his immobilized wrist. The doctor on duty at the clinic had sent him home under orders to rest. The radiographs were clear; it was just a sprain.

Hefting the drooping weight of Shiro’s hand back up, Keith nearly dropped the light gray suit jacket and silk tie draped over his shoulder. “Above your heart. You have to keep it elevated.”

“Sorry. I’m tired.” Shiro slurred, painkillers having taken effect. He rubbed his face on his shoulder.

“S’okay,” Keith yawned, mouth wide as he fumbled with the lock. Finally, the cylinder clicked and the door released, creaking inward. He pushed it the rest of the way with his foot. Kuro slipped inside before Keith could shut it again, rubbing his sleek, black form between their legs as they made their way to the bedroom.

“Hey, little lion,” Keith greeted the house cat.

He chirped back at Keith, ignoring Shiro entirely, and sauntered on ahead of them, leading the way with tail high, a banner bobbing along in his wake.

Setting down Shiro’s things, Keith helped him undress: shoes, shirt, and pants, even his briefs, dusty from the desert and soiled from their deed. Pulling back the covers of the crisply made bed, he gently pushed Shiro down to the pillows.

With stiff compliance, Shiro allowed his arm to be lifted and repositioned, gazing up at Keith with sleepy, half-lidded eyes as fingertips grazed over the rough scars on his chest.

“You good?” Keith reached for the blanket and tucked him in, securing the sheets beneath the mattress.

Shiro nodded.

“Okay,” Keith forced his mouth up into a smile. “I guess I’ll see you later.” He didn’t expect there might actually be a later, despite the definitive “we” in the Blue Lion’s cavern, but it seemed an innocuous enough thing to say. No pressure implied.

Kuro leaped onto the pillow and curled up beside Shiro’s head, resting his own between his paws, crouched like a sphinx and looking up at Keith with large, round, golden eyes.  _ The neighbors feed you, my ass. You live here. _

“Keith?”

“Yes?” he answered, hopeful.

“I’d like you to stay.” Shiro shut his eyes. “Please.”

Keith didn’t have to remind himself not to protest and after disrobing unceremoniously, he climbed in, pulling Shiro toward him. Arms wrapped around the massive rib cage, he pressed his lips against the warm nape of Shiro’s neck. Tension dissipated almost immediately, and they melded into each other, becoming one. Keith wrapped a leg over Shiro’s hip and squeezed him tight before descending into dreamless sleep.

Several hours later and sometime after noon, Keith fixed breakfast from the dregs of Shiro’s refrigerator. Finding the staples came as a surprise. He had expected the fridge to be as empty as the rest of the apartment, but it was all there: milk, eggs, cheese, bacon, something in a pitcher that resembled orange juice, butter, a whole head of garlic, onions, and potatoes. Several parcels of frozen meat sat stashed in the freezer. The question was how fresh any of it might be, but going through the expiration dates reminded him that Shiro didn’t keep his habits, and even the unlabeled pitcher of pulpy o.j. was safe for consumption.

They ate in the comfort of a shared quiet, letting the events of the previous evening settle as they made sense of them, each in his own way. Keith had nothing to say. Shiro now knew and didn’t seem to mind that he had voices in his head. Voices that apparently took the form of colossal mechanical cats. Blessedly, they were leaving his head alone for now, and as he was quickly learning, very little rattled Shiro.

Keith cleaned up while Shiro showered and afterward drove him to work.

Shiro opened the door, about to exit the truck, but changed his mind, instead leaning in for a kiss. “I had a good time last night. I mean it.”

He was leaving something out. Keith scratched his head, hair slipping out of his ponytail. “But?”

“But. Next time we go on an adventure out in the desert, let’s,” Shiro paused. His eyes flicked up from Keith’s to the stained interior ceiling fabric pinned up with a series of red-tipped straight pins arranged in a simple quilt pattern to the smoldering cigarette between nicotine stained fingers, “go in prepared.” He jerked his chin forward just enough to bump noses as Keith reached up to press rough fingertips against the fullness of his lips. One by one, Shiro sucked on the tips of those fingers, caressing each with his tongue before tilting his head for Keith to meet him.

Emerging for breath, Keith puffed on his cigarette, releasing the smoke out the corner of his mouth, clouding the cab in a graying haze. “It’s fine.”

“Condoms and lube are valuable commodities when you’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

“What, you don’t like spit and grit?” Keith muttered. It would likely be a few days before he was recovered, but it was worth the current discomfort.

The set of Shiro’s mouth melted into a grin as he shook his head. “Later.” He shut the door after himself with a whirr and hiss of the pressure release from his prosthetic. Keith raised a hand in farewell, watching him go.

Driving home, Keith considered the fruits of his labor. He had, in fact, achieved his original goal, but he hadn’t given much consideration to what might happen next.

It was the only thing occupying his mind while he showered.

Laundry absolutely had to be the next priority; he had nothing clean to wear and was reduced to determining what could be re-worn without being offensive. Conveniently, a laundromat was located a block up from Allura’s, not that he needed an excuse to see Shiro.

He didn’t want to just show up, that might be obnoxious. Maybe they could have a late dinner, go see a movie or something? Was that too much too soon? He was about to text Shiro to let him know he’d be out that way, but when he hit the button, his dead phone stared back at him, an empty, black expanse.

Keith gathered what he could find in two large bags and the laundry basket then drove back out to town. Five loads and several hours later, he’d finished folding his clothes and had managed to charge his phone. Task completed, Keith unlocked his phone and, cigarette between his lips, began to type.

As soon as he began, a lanky brown arm snaked across his back. Long, thin fingers traced his arm from shoulder to elbow. “Hey, girrrl!”

He froze.  _ The hell? _

“I had you at-” the voice spoke again. Young, male.

Heel to the pavement, Keith pivoted a full 180 degrees, ducking as he watched the arm glide over his head. Turning again, he met the gaze staring at him.

“Don’t touch me.” Inhaling, Keith stood up, jammed his phone deep into his back pocket, and exhaled slowly through his teeth, tendrils of smoke wafting through the air between them. Taking the cigarette from his mouth, he realized he recognized the man, and relaxed somewhat, gauging the situation.

Horror and embarrassment flashed in bright eyes, as the tall, gangly figure with cropped brunette hair caught his balance. Still reeling, he stepped backward with a confidence remarkable from the ungainly inelegance of his movements and flashed a sparkling grin. “Oh, it’s you, mullet.”

Keith read the name tag on his breast pocket, watching him cough. Lance. “You’re the waiter at Allura’s.”

Lance didn’t bother to confirm or deny that statement. Instead, he said, matter-of-fact, “You cut your hair.”

Deciding to ignore him, Keith crushed the remains of his smoke beneath his boot heel. He walked swiftly toward the restaurant, lengthening his stride to cover ground, building distance between them and telling himself there was nothing gained by brawling with Shiro’s coworkers.

Keith made it to the door first and let himself inside, allowing it to slam shut behind him. “Hey, Pidge.” He raised a hand in greeting, making his way to the bar facing the kitchen as Lance burst through, brass chimes clattering against the glass.

From behind the counter, Shiro raised his head.

The master chef turned to look, scraping the grill clean with a knife. “What did Lance do this time?” he asked, more to himself than anyone else.

Keith slid into one of the stools and dropping his bag on the seat beside him, looking over his shoulder, chewing the inside of his cheek, considering. “He made a mistake.”

Watching for a moment, Keith tried but couldn’t make out what Lance and Pidge were saying. There was a lot of gesturing and hand flapping in his general direction. He swiveled back around and pulling out his laptop, decided it wasn’t important.

The master chef leaned out across the counter, pushed a menu in front of him, and offered his hand. “I’m Hunk.”

“Keith.” He firmly clasped the outstretched hand.

“Yeah, I know.” Hunk’s smile was wry and friendly; he didn’t bother hiding his amusement, eyeing Lance’s theatrics.

“Sorry. I should have introduced you,” Shiro said.

Clapping Shiro on the back, Hunk returned to his grill, “Look at you, you’re already distracted.”

Attention back on Keith, Shiro extended his hand out, hard brace clattering on the counter, and pointed to the menu. “You know, we’re at a restaurant, I should feed you and yet I still don’t know much about what you like to eat.”

“Other than McDonald’s, beef, and standard American breakfast?”

“Don’t forget coffee,” Shiro added.

Keith picked up the folio, scanning the lists of entrées and small plates, shifting in the hard, wooden seat. Plain and simple, his ass hurt, and it would for a while. He tucked one booted foot beneath him. The bench in his truck at least had some cushion to it; in contrast, these stools were some kind of nightmare. If this kept up, he’d just have to stand. No big deal.

“You all right over there?” Shiro asked.

“Sore,” he grumbled, only just noticing Shiro’s bladed prosthetic slice through a fillet of raw salmon with precision and ease. He watched in fascination as it morphed back into the shape of a human hand, its fuchsia light like electricity arcing across the casement. No tech on Earth existed that could shift like that, and he wanted to ask about it, but he’d pretty much agreed not to; this was alien technology for sure.

Shiro gripped the counter with his mechanical fingers, resting against the edge while his left wrist hung over, supported by the brace. He sighed with disparagement, but his mouth had drawn up into a self-satisfied smirk. “Look, you’re the one who insisted. What was it you said?” He looked away as if in contemplation, a finger to his lips. “‘Hard, Shiro’? Your ass isn’t self-lubricating; of course, it hurts.”

Keith glared at him stone-faced, “ _ I know. _ ”

From no less than five feet away, Pidge paused, turning back toward them, “Well, it sounds like  _ somebody _ got some.” She approached, flinging an arm across Keith’s shoulders and standing on tiptoe. Pretending to whisper in his ear, she spoke loud enough for Shiro to hear too. “He’s needed that for a while.”

Despite the flush blossoming across his cheeks, Shiro pretended to ignore her jab. “I didn’t hurt you too bad, did I?”

“Please, Shiro,” Keith said, exasperated, tying his hair back, “I mean, I came, didn’t I? Don’t second-guess it. I had a good time.” At least he had until the Blue Lioness started whinging at him. He wondered how long the present silence would last.

“Well, y-yes,” Shiro stammered.

“White ribbons, Shiro.” Slapping his laptop shut and resting his chin on the heel of a palm for effect, Keith continued. “I bet we could do better. It was good, but I’d probably rate the experience a six-and-a-half out of ten, giving us the benefit of first time and all. I think if we work on our communication and you gain a little, mmm,” he stalled for effect, tapping his chin, “‘confidence under cover,’ we could get this up to an eight or nine pretty quickly.”

“I’m not sure if I’m offended or not.” Shiro pulled away from the counter, brow raised.

“I certainly hope you’re not. I’d like to do it again sometime. We’ll only get better with practice.”

Hunk faced the grill, making gagging noises. “You know I can hear you, right?”

“Yeah,” Keith and Shiro answered, nearly simultaneously.

Heaving himself up on his elbows, and breathing out heavily through his nose, Shiro leaned so far over their foreheads touched. “So,  _ spicy _ side dish,” his words came soft and low. “You do like spice?”

Keith blinked and nodded his affirmation as Shiro slowly edged back.

“I know what I’m making you.”

+++

Keith drove Shiro to work the next day, and the day after that. He returned after the lunch rush, seating himself out of the way at the kitchen bar with his laptop and ordering a plate of spicy tuna rolls with extra togarashi so he could prolong his visit. He had lasted all of three days before Allura approached, glittering blue eyes like stars through the parted clouds of her silvery hair trailing stardust. She carried herself proudly, with the bearing of one long accustomed to giving orders. Setting a pen and a clipboard of paperwork down beside him, she studied him shrewdly.

“It’s Keith, right?”

He turned toward her, watching her search his face, head bobbing up then down, “Allura.” He knew who she was, but noted with mild surprise that she also wore a name tag. The manager, Coran, of whom Shiro fondly spoke, was still a mystery. Supposedly Allura had sent him off on some errand. It must have taken him far.

“If you’re going to linger like this, you might as well make yourself useful.” Fingertips on the clipboard, she nudged it closer to him across the countertop.

He glanced at it, an employment application. “I don’t need a job, but thank you?” Keith frowned. Being neither strapped for cash nor unemployed, he was unsure of the gesture’s intent.

“I’d like you to stick around. For  _ whatever reason _ ,” Allura emphasized, “my sushi chef has been far less distracted lately. He’s even shown up on time three days in a row. Usually, if I can get him here on schedule once a week, I’m doing well.” She glanced over at Shiro, clenching his jaw as he walked off toward the freezer.

It was no secret that Keith currently drove Shiro to work; of course, he was on time. Keith also suspected sleep was doing wonders for Shiro’s performance. Every one of the last several nights, Keith had stayed curled up beside him, and they both took some comfort in that. “Then I can stay and work on my book.”

“No. I need the extra pair of hands.”

So that’s what she’d been getting at? Even Keith could tell she spoke the truth, and if he’d thought he would actually get to work on his text, he’d been deluding himself. He was unable to concentrate over the clamor of conversation and the savory aromas from the kitchen. He wasn’t finished though. “Look, if I can’t write, then I can’t work, so are you going to pay me what I think I’m worth to offset and compensate for my loss of time?”

She scrawled a number in the box labeled “Hourly Wage.”

Keith crossed it out and changed it. _ Why not? _

Allura glanced at the figures and initialed it. “Fine.”

“I’ll help you out when I’m here.” Why was she willing to pay that much? He was sure she could easily find someone experienced with an advertisement in the right place. He’d taken her for eccentric, not stupid, so what was going on? It was a question for later, but one tucked away at the back of his mind. He took up the pen, drawing out the red ink in a precise, narrow script across the form as he filled in the blanks.

Upon completion, he traded Allura the clipboard for a notepad. “You make sure Shiro gets here on time and start when he does. Keep the same shift or not; it really doesn’t matter to me. Pidge is on scheduling duty while Coran’s out. There are aprons over there,” she pointed to a coat rack behind the counter. “You’re okay for today, but next time, black slacks, a white button-down, do something about your hair, and please lose that trashy nose ring.”

He slid back and dropped to the floor, looking up at her as he stood. She was tall, possibly taller than Shiro, but he’d have to see them side-by-side. “Don’t be rude. I’m doing you a favor.”

One hand on her hip, she flatly delivered her reply, “I’m paying you real money. You can follow the dress code. Pidge will get you the handbook.”

He’d think about it if he remembered. Maybe.

Reading over his responses on the forms, Allura slowly walked away. Keith had been honest about his education and work experience and expected her to ask him about it, but she did not.

He grabbed the cleanest apron he could find, which still had a dollop of some unidentifiable substance smeared across one of the pockets, and tied it at his waist.

Never having waited tables in his life, he wasn’t sure quite where to begin. Lance, with his manufactured smile and one hand on a hip, was casually chatting up a booth full of middle-aged moms with their bored, undisciplined offspring. Keith decided then and there that he didn’t need a mentor and had eaten at enough restaurants throughout his life that he had a pretty good idea of what he ought to do.

This sure was going to be fun.

+++

The next few days were rough.

He could deal with requests and remember orders no problem. On occasion, guests would speak to him in Japanese, which amused him more than anything; his Japanese was marginally better than junior high proficiency. “Conversational” was the term he used to describe his skill level, but he sometimes had to fill in word meanings through context. When he had been shunted into the foster care system, he’d spoken very little English and had consequently ended up placed within the SoCal Japanese community. In middle school, he’d figured out that living in a cultural pocket was sometimes alienating and by the time he entered high school, he’d fallen into the habit of pretending he only spoke English and the little bit of Spanish he’d learned in class, even with the families he lived with. At the same time, even though he hadn’t used his Japanese in years, it was easy enough to pick back up.

What he could not deal with was the small talk, strange personal questions, bizarre over sharing, stupid comments on his appearance, and the fact that there were two new regulars specifically requesting him at their table. One of them was able to remember his name. The other referred to him as, “the guy with the hair.” Shooting over pleading looks to Lance only earned him a small smirk and a head shake in return.

Unsurprisingly, when Lance discovered that these customers were generous tippers, he decided to make a game of it. Who could earn more by the end of the night: the veteran server, gratuitous flirt, and smooth-talking charmer, or Keith, unwitting participant and carefree rebel?

Later that week, while closing, Keith counted out the last of the bills from his apron pocket. “That’s $2.61 more than you. I win again. Third night in a row. Fork it over.” He held his hand out expectantly, snapping his fingers when Lance didn’t immediately respond.

Groaning and peeling off several bills from his stack, Lance handed the money over before folding up the remainder of his haul and shoving the cash into his pocket. “No recount this time.”

“So you’ve finally decided I’m not cheating?”

“I never said-”

“Oh come on,” Keith spoke over him, mentally tallying his own earnings and putting it in his wallet. “There’s no reason to recount more than once unless you think the other person is cheating.” He raked a hand through his fringe, pulling the hair back from his face before realizing he had nothing to keep it back with and letting it go again.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of suspicious? You’ve never done this job before. There’s no way you’re better than me.”

“Who said I was?” Keith found Lance’s perpetual doubt offensively off-putting. “Here’s some unsolicited advice, though. First, ditch the shitty cologne. I can smell you all the way across the dining room. I’m surprised Allura hasn’t said anything to you about it.” Lance flinched unconsciously. “Second, stop trying to flirt with everything that has a pulse. False sincerity is really off-putting. Third, write down your orders.”

Lance rested languidly back against the bar, one foot back up against the wood paneling. He braced his elbows against the counter, long hands with fine, tapered fingers hanging off the edge. He fixed his gaze at some point across the restaurant, the yellow cast of the fluorescent light reflecting in his watery eyes. “Who made up this stupid rule anyway?”

“You did.” Keith wasn’t out to get him, per se, although if Lance weren’t careful, he really would play the part of the rogue gambler and bleed Casa McClain dry, running out of town while still on a high streak. “We can always change the rules.”

“No.”

Of course not. Lance wouldn’t admit his own recommendations and incentives for competitive play might have been a little too ambitious. Keith surveyed the room. The tables were wiped down, chairs pushed in, floor swept and mopped, the kitchen spotless, and all the laundry collected for the linen service. They were alone. Hunk had taken off early on a date with his girlfriend. Pidge was out with her brother, and Shiro was away at a late session with his therapist. Everything had been cleaned up and put away.

Stretching and yawning, Lance cracked his shoulders and his wrists before standing. “Guess that calls it a night then,” he drawled, tossing over the key.

Keith caught it one-handed over his shoulder.

“Catch you tomorrow, mullet,” Lance sauntered toward the exit, raising his hand in a two-fingered farewell, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

“See you,” Keith said to no one.

He did one more sweep through the premises before heading out to his truck. Setting his phone to speaker, he called Shiro as he pulled out of the back gravel lot. The temperature had dropped and rain now crashed like the water of life from the thunderheads above, atypical but not unheard of for mid-fall. In the warm, yellow glow of his headlights droplets spattered, creating craters in the topography of the dry, dusty earth.

“Hey, Keith.”

His heart warmed to the soft, affectionate way Shiro spoke his name. “Hey. Do you still want me to head over?”

“Of course. How’d closing go?”

“Uneventful.”

He passed a car that looked vaguely familiar through the smears of the wipers across his windshield. A short way ahead was a figure, tall and lean, head back, glistening from the pelting storm as he drove by. Shiro was saying something; he should have been listening.

“Keith?”

“Yeah? Sorry, I think I just saw Lance walking on the side of the road.”

“Lance?” Shiro asked. “We’re in the middle of a torrential downpour.”

+++

One foot in front of the other, Lance ambled along the shoulder, eyed narrowed to slits, just open enough to watch the road as he caught raindrops in his mouth. He loved the water and there was so little of it here. Sometimes on his days off, he’d go swimming in the Colorado. It was nothing like the ocean, though, and he missed the Caribbean where he’d been born.

A truck flew past him, soaking him in a sheet of spray from the asphalt.

_ There goes Keith. _ Not that Lance expected him to stop. He was pretty sure Keith didn’t like him very much, and why should he? Lance had been nothing but obnoxious since they’d met.

The truck slowed down and turned around.

_ Huh? _

Keith cranked down the window. “Lance!” he called.

Jumping to attention, Lance turned his head, just barely able to hear him over the ominous crash of thunder approaching from the west. He blinked the stinging rain out of his eyes and stared at Keith, dark gaze with dark hair framing the pale face that peered out at him.

“Need a lift?”

Lance paused. Stunned by the generosity of the offer, the decision felt as if it bore some greater weight. His shirt clung soaked to his frame, hair plastered down, a dark cap against his head. He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Get in.” Keith opened the passenger door and kicked it wide before it could spring back.

“Car broke down and my phone died,” Lance explained, clambering up and shutting the door behind him.

“I figured,” Keith mumbled, watching the road.

No one was coming. No one likely would.

Lance looked around the cab, taking it in, shoving aside crumpled bags, fast food wrappers, crusted cups, old mail, receipts, and dirty clothes, absorbing the time warp of the old Chevy. He glanced at the overfilled ashtray and secondary soda can, wrinkling his nose. Not everyone was perfect, he supposed. He’d been dying to get a look inside the truck. Leaning over the back of the bench, Lance pressed his face to the back window in an attempt to see into the covered bed, but it was too dark. “Where did you dig this girl up?” He looked around for the seatbelt, but not finding it, hung his elbow over the bench and made himself comfortable.

He didn’t know what to say, but it was too quiet and Keith offered nothing in return. “How old is this truck, it smells weird in here, cigarettes, degrading vinyl, b.o., something else?”

“You really are the poster child of charm, charisma, and good manners,” Keith remarked. The echoing hammer of thunder resounded around them again.

Maybe he should keep his mouth shut.

Changing the subject, Keith continued, “Do you know what broke? Maybe we can fix it.”

“Timing belt.” Lance knew that much. Hunk had been on him to take it in for days because of the knocking in his engine, but he hadn’t heeded the advice. He didn’t want to think about how much the repair might cost or if he’d damaged the engine from neglecting to take care of the problem before it got worse.

“Shit.”

“No kidding,” Lance agreed.

“Well, that’s not getting fixed tonight.”

Lance shook his head. “Nope.”

Rainwater spattered Keith’s cheek as he rolled up the window, squeezing his eyes tight like a cat and giving his head a vigorous shake before wiping his face off with the shoulder of his shirt. It took a lot for Lance to keep a straight face. If Keith didn’t have such an awful personality, he might almost have been cute. On face value, though, Lance could see exactly why Shiro liked him. He was smart, competent, and had absolutely gorgeous hair. He still wanted to touch it.

_ Not my type. _

“Where to?”

Deep violet eyes bored right into him, challenging. They were always challenging. Wiping his hands across his face, he put that thought away, rubbed at the large droplets of water collected in his lashes and brows, then scratched vigorously at his scalp with both hands, mussing his hair. “Uh. Home?”

For a moment, all Lance could hear was a static-like ring through his head. It was the pounding of waves with salt water in his eardrums, the siren song in the spiral of a conch, ebbing and flowing with the shifting tides. He shook it out as he sat there, trying to ground himself again, seated in this old truck that probably wasn’t even street legal, parked and rumbling on a deserted highway.

Picking up the pack of cigarettes between them on the bench, Keith tapped one out and lit up, blowing the smoke in Lance’s face. “Are you listening to me?”

“ _ Lance? _ ”

No, he hadn’t been paying attention. It wasn’t Keith who had spoken his name.

“I don’t know where you live.”

+++

“You sure you don’t want to come in? Just for a few minutes? I really appreciate you driving me home.”

Lance hadn’t budged, watching him expectantly, and Keith wasn’t sure what to do to make him go. He hadn’t shut up the entire drive, so absorbed by the sound of his own voice that he’d missed pointing out several turns and a trip that Keith now realized should have taken no more than ten minutes had lasted for nearly half an hour. Keith’s patience was worn thin, and he was glad to finally get rid of his unexpected passenger.

If only that passenger would actually leave.

“If you’d been struck by lightning and killed, I’m not sure I’d be able to forgive myself.” It was probably a true statement.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re salty?” Lance returned. He made himself comfortable, darting Keith a sidelong glance as he repositioned himself closer, squeaking as he slid across the vinyl.

The move was not lost, and Keith eyed him, wet shirt clinging to his chest and arms, slacks stretched over his slim thighs. Instead of acknowledging the passive advance, Keith pretended to ignore it, resting his wrists on the very top of the steering wheel. “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?”

Lance shrugged off the insult, “Touch é . Just come in and say hi.” He pointed to an old Jeep Wrangler in front of them. “It looks like Hunk’s back at least and the lights are on.”

“Fine. As long as you actually get away from my face and out of my truck.” He could smell the dampened musk of Lance’s cologne mixed with body heat and something he could only identify as repressed hunger. It wasn’t so much desire as it was a certain magnetism, or perhaps the obligate force of magnetic repulsion that Lance was feeling audacious enough to oppose. Keith heard his shallow breathing, and the slight vibration in his chest from his heartbeat was made visible with each expansion and contraction of his lungs.

The downpour had revived or rejuvenated something in Lance that Keith couldn’t quite place. He practically radiated with some unnamed phosphorescence, born of the sea but surfaced from the desert, clearly out of his element. Keith had no idea what was going on in Lance’s head, but he suspected it was some manner of internal conflict.

Lance got the message. “Deal.”

The rain had subsided to a light sprinkle, and Keith followed him up to the door of a row house. Lance reached for the door as it swung open wide, and Matt Holt stepped out onto the porch.

“See ya, Katie!” Matt called, stumbling into them.

“Whoa.” Lance pushed him gently back, braced against the wrought iron stair rail.

“Oh, sorry!” Regaining his balance and stabbing a finger at the bridge of his glasses to push them back up his nose, Matt reined in his surprise, grinning widely. “Hey Lance,” then turning to Keith, “‘Sup, flyboy?”

“Delivering this one home.” He grabbed Lance by the shoulders and walking him forward, shoved him toward the door.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Pidge exclaimed, folding her arms over her chest, standing aside.

Matt’s laughter rang out as he made his way down the steps. Last to enter, Keith tugged the door closed behind him.

Pidge held out a chilled Guinness, rivulets of condensation running down the sides of the bottle and dripping off onto the floor, already slick with wet footprints. “I cracked this for me, but you look like you need it.”

Keith protested, “I’m not staying.”

“Uh huh.” She shoved the bottle into his hand then wiped her own on her shirt, leaving a damp print over her belly.

“What about me?” Lance whined.

“You live here,” she answered.

Although no one else did, Keith toed off his boots beside the doormat, before following them to the living room. The space was filled with a mess of electronics with a modest television in the center, surrounded by shelves of books and movies on one side and gaming consoles on the other, arranged by year. Cords and wires were everywhere intertwined, a web in front of and behind the shelves and speakers, so hopelessly tangled it made Keith feel better about his own housekeeping habits. Beside an old vinyl sofa, rife with splits and tears with temperfoam bursting from the seams of the cushions, was a towering unit containing what Keith recognized as an old Zenith shortwave radio with amplifiers. A headset plugged into it with cables connecting to converters and a wireless router. He spotted Pidge’s rig on the side table, kitschy cryptid stickers decorating the case of the laptop.

Lance continued off down a narrow hall, still dripping.

“So, what happened?” Pidge asked, sinking down onto the sofa. What looked like a large fur throw pillow slid toward her, molding to the side of her leg as it picked up its head. Flattening its triangular ears back into a helmet, it opened its mouth in a wide yawn.

Keith watched the enormous cat unfurl and stretch, arching its rear end high upon the armrest before curling back up and nestling into Pidge. “I found him walking on the road. Car broke down.”

A loud whistle and Hunk’s voice came from the kitchen, “Goldie!”  The Maine Coon hopped delicately off the couch and padded away, tail swishing slowly from side to side.

“Hey, Hunk!” Keith called, craning his neck toward the kitchen and settling beside Pidge.

“Hey, Keith.”

Pidge stretched out over the armrest, feet in the air and elbows propped on the side table. “Could you bring me another cold one? I gave mine away,” she called.

“Sure, one sec.”

Keith could hear him open two before emerging in a t-shirt and cargo shorts, the geometric designs of intricate tattoos peeking out just below the hems. Hunk scrubbed a hand through his tousled hair, and after handing Pidge her beer, sat down on the floor beside them, leaning back against the couch.

“Rough night?” Keith asked.

“Shay has an exam in the morning. I came home to let her study.”

“Shay’s the  _ girlfriend _ .” Pidge winked, nudging Hunk’s shoulder with the ball of her tiny foot.

“She’s-” Hunk took a deep breath and smiled. “Yeah. She’s totally my girlfriend.”

Pidge took a long swig of her stout and placed her other bare foot comfortably on Hunk’s shoulder next to the first one. “Lance’s Civic broke down again.”

He turned around, “Not surprised. I told him to take it in.”

_ Again. _ Keith’s beer swayed like a pendulum between his fingers, considering. He actually found himself feeling bad for Lance. Whatever reason he had for not taking care of his car, getting stranded on the highway in the rain just plain sucked. “He said it was the timing belt. If he can get the part, I can replace it tomorrow before his shift, but if it’s more than that?” he trailed off, sipping his beer.

“You do cars?” Hunk asked.

“Sometimes. No one will touch my truck.”

Hunk laughed, “Well it looks kind of-”

“Awful? I need to go to a salvage yard and find real seats. It’s never really been an issue since I wasn’t driving other people around, but it’s not exactly safe.”

“You aren’t either, I’d wager.”

“Details,” Keith raised a brow and lifted his shoulders then dropped them.

Hunk scoffed. “Whatever, man. Lance is not your problem. I’ll go out in the morning and check the damage. He’s clueless about cars.”

“Let me know if you need me.”  _ Why did you just offer to help? _

Because it was the right thing to do.

“Sure thing.”

Keith yawned. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, looking down as he set it on the armrest. The text notification blinked on his screen.

**Shiro:** ?

“I told Shiro I’d call him back.”

Pidge blinked as if waiting for him to do something. “Well? Go call him.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he stood and stretched, hands on his hips, leaning back to crack his spine joint by joint.

With a wave of her hand, she shooed him into the hall to place the call.

Shiro answered after the first ring, “Hey, Keith.”

“Hey, you.”

“Was it Lance?”

“Yeah, I just got him home.”

“Okay. I’m glad he wasn’t stranded. I’ll probably head to bed soon, but you know where the extra key is. Just let yourself in.”

In all likelihood, Shiro would probably be sprawled out over the comforter, staring at the ceiling wide awake when he arrived. “Sure thing. How are you doing?” He didn’t want to pry, therapy was personal, but he didn’t want to seem uncaring either.

Shiro paused before replying. “I’m okay. Have fun.”

“Right. See you later.” He knew not to ask again and ended the call.

Pidge patted the cushion for him to resume his position when he returned. Lance, having changed into some semblance of dry clothes, 80s sports shorts and a borderline too small, faded blue tank, stood in the doorway discussing the particulars of his breakdown with Hunk.

“Hey,” Pidge whispered, leaning over to bump shoulders with him. “Loosen up.”

Keith sighed, slumping back into the cushions.

Pidge snorted back her laughter with a grin. “You’re something else.” She thought for a moment. “You play video games?”

“Yes.”

“Super Mario 3? These people,” she flipped her hand toward the boys in the kitchen doorway, “won’t play with me anymore.”

“I have to admit, I probably haven’t touched that one since the 90s.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can carry both of us if you can’t pull your own weight.”

“That’s not hard, I don’t weigh very much.”

Smirking in amusement, Pidge roused herself from the comfort of the sunken foam and started the game, tossing the first controller to Keith. He caught it underhand.

“I always play Luigi when I play pairs,” Pidge continued.

“Good. I prefer red anyway. Let’s do this.”

It was 3 am before Keith tumbled into bed beside Shiro, recounting the evening. He’d learned more than he’d bargained for. Pidge was the toughest hardcore Mario 3 player he’d ever met. He’d gone down a handful of times before they beat the game. She didn’t even die once; the muscle memory that required was astounding. The three roommates had lived together since they left the Air Force. He couldn’t imagine Lance piloting anything, but apparently, he had. He just “wasn’t very good,” as Pidge so kindly put it. There was not just one, but three cats living in the rented house, or possibly six depending on how one defined “cat.” Pidge’s was a tiny calico she fondly called “L.G.” which stood for “Algae” for some reason that had to do with paws covered in bioluminescent algae when she’d been found. Lance had a lanky gray short hair, Lapis who eventually emerged from under the sofa and draped herself across Keith’s shoulders.

Pidge had also found his book. She’d pulled it out from between the sofa cushions and tossed it to him with an accusatory, “Kevin Goldman my ass. You could at least have stuck with Keith.”

“No,” he’d replied, “people know me as Keith.”

“But your name is Akira Kogane.”

“Good job, sleuth. You get a gold star. Did you what, see my employment application?”

She’d also told him about her dad.

Shiro wrapped his arm around Keith, pulling him in beneath the covers. “Did you have a good time?”

“I guess?” Keith patted around, searching for Shiro’s hand, forgetting for a moment he was looking in the wrong place. It was still splinted in a brace. He gave up.

“You guess?”

“Yeah, your friends are nice people. They’re  _ d _ ecent people.”

“Keith?”

He hummed, settling his head in the crook of Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro kissed the top of his head, “Nothing.”

+++

A little bit of sleep, a phone call, and a thermos of coffee later, Keith found himself venturing out with Hunk to scour local mechanics for parts. Hunk had already driven out to take a look at the damage under the hood of Lance’s powder blue Honda Civic. The one good thing about a common car was that parts were always easy to find.

The repair took half a day with two of them, but it was a lot easier having a second pair of hands that knew what to do than it would have been otherwise.

Hunk tossed the keys to Lance when they arrived at the restaurant later that afternoon. “She has been revived.”

Lance clasped his hands together in relief. “Awesome. Thanks!”

“You’d better be thankful. You’ve been unbearable all day!” Pidge exclaimed, enunciating each word carefully. “Repeat after me, ‘It is just a car.’”

Lance sniffed and snubbed her before going off to check the dining floor.

“I take it everything went all right?” Shiro asked.

“Yeah. It was pretty quick once we had the parts,” answered Hunk.

Pidge grabbed Keith by the elbow, dragging him along out to her post by the door. “We need to talk about Chapter Four.”

“Chapter Four?” he yawned. It had already been a long day.

“In your book?” she whispered, conspiratorially.

He got that much. “Lunar Anomalies.”

“Do you think there’s really a moon base?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your text heavily implied the presence of an extraterrestrial moon base.”

Keith shrugged, but she was on to him. “Our cameras worked on the moon. You can see the same structures in photographs from several different missions, which, by the way, I was only able to get a hold of under the Freedom of Information Act. I wouldn’t necessarily say that what we’re looking at is an ancient alien stronghold on the moon, but there’s something there for sure.”

“The record is a mess. Kubrick shot the lunar missions in a studio on base in exchange for the ability to produce his films free of oversight starting with-”

“2001. Yeah, I’ve heard that one. But are you saying you don’t believe we went to the moon? Come on, Pidge-“

“No, but the Hasselblads were kind of odd, don’t you think?” she returned. “The film emulsions weren’t properly recorded, and the reseau plates aren’t consistent. Some of them look like they were altered later and we all know Photoshop magic didn’t exist in 1969.”

“Most of the public images were definitely altered, I agree with you on that, but I also believe much of what was used had been taken by the astronauts on the lunar missions.” Keith paused, considering. No one had ever asked him about his book outside of extraterrestrial researchers, cryptid trackers, and moon landing deniers who’d managed to wrangle his pseudonymous email from the publishing house. “I have high res copies of the prints, but honestly, I’d love to get my hands on the negatives. I just don’t think they still exist.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, about to speak again when their first customer walked through the door. “We’ll talk more later.”

Later never came and Pidge agreed to get Hunk home that night to grab his Jeep since they’d taken Keith’s truck to repair Lance’s car and someone had needed to drive it to the restaurant. Shiro planned to go out with Matt, which everyone agreed was a good thing. Keith and Lance ended up closing again for the second night in a row.

Lance didn’t even ask about tips. “Thanks for fixing my car.”

“It was all Hunk. Thank him.” Keith made for the door, tossing Lance the key this time. He wasn’t sure he should ask, but curiosity won out. “Allura pays bank. What’s the cash issue?”

Lance hesitated. “I sent my last paycheck home.”

Keith didn’t know what to make of that. “Your parents?”

He nodded, noting Keith’s confusion. “Yeah. They’re still in Cuba.”

“I didn’t know you’re from Cuba.”

“Technically. I’m waiting for my naturalization certificate to show up in the mail.” He made his way to the switch plate and shut off the lights. Keith stepped out and held the door.

“Congratulations.” He reached out and tentatively placed his hand on Lance’s shoulder for a moment before dropping his arm. What else could he say?

“At least now the government can’t send me back.”

“Theoretically.” Keith wasn’t sure he trusted the government enough to not renege on that, but good on Lance. “And you can go visit,” he added, walking across the lot to his truck, feeling the gravel wedge into the split soles of his boots.

“So they say.”

Keith understood that Lance wasn’t going to say anything more. “Right. See you tomorrow.”

It wasn’t until he was nearly home that he realized Lance was following him.

He climbed out of the cab and waited, arms crossed as Lance pulled up beside him in front of the trailer. Keith was still smarting from having brought Shiro out here and didn’t particularly welcome an unwanted guest. He’d also yet to see the damage from the storm, expecting most of the interior to be wet inside, though regardless, the arid climate had already erased the evidence of the previous night’s downpour. Even the Airstream would likely be dried out in another day or two.

What was this all about anyway?

“Is this really where you live?” Lance poked around the piles and tarp-covered stacks, peering around the appliances in disrepair and the interior shells of the camper lined up on the small lot.

“No. I just unknowingly led you out to a trash heap so I could murder you in cold blood and steal your Civic,” he retorted. “Of course I live here. What are you doing?”

“I’m bored, so I figured I’d come see if it was true.”

“What?”

Lance continued, “Shiro said you live in, and I quote, ‘a shitty Airstream.’ He’s right.”

“He’s wrong. It just needs some TLC,” he replied as Lance opened the door and stepped inside, fumbling for the light switch. Keith found it first and the single bulb flickered to life.

“I guess it could be cute,” Lance mumbled, taking it in.

“Go home.”

“Quaint? Charming?” Lance paid him no heed, wandering through the debris, sloshing through the puddles formed the previous night from leaks in the aluminum casement, and tracking dirt in with him. Stopping before the bathroom door, he read the bumper sticker aloud that was plastered across it, “Caution: Sharp Edges.” A soft guffaw escaped his lungs and he stepped inside, exploring.

Emerging with Keith’s straight razor earned Lance a glare of consternation. “I didn’t know people still even used these!”

“Put that back. I wouldn’t want you to  _ accidentally _ cut yourself,” Keith warned.

Any moment now Lance could leave.

Any moment.

“Okay, fine.” Lance disappeared inside and put it away. “Whoa. Wait. Why do you have a six-pack in here?” This time he came back with two bottles of Strongbow. “Cider behind the toilet? Do I even want to know?”

“It’s the coolest spot in the entire camper. Do you see a refrigerator?” Keith gestured to the space around them, annoyance building in his tone. He never had guests, much less uninvited ones, so why was this happening now?

“I did. It was outside. Does it work?”

“Motor’s fried.” Resigned to letting Lance stay, at least for a little while before bodily evicting him, Keith popped the cap off one of the warm ciders with a flathead screwdriver from the counter and shoved it aggressively toward him. If nothing else, Lance was at least entertaining. “It’s been out there for a while, who knows what else might be wrong with it.”

Guzzling down about half the bottle in one swallow, Lance surveyed the space again in an attempt to decide where to go next. Not that there were many options. “You don’t have a mattress on your bed.” He quickly downed the last of his cider as he meandered over to the folding screen that divided the what should have been the bedroom from the rest of the trailer.

“Are you trying to make yourself sick?”

“Oh come on. I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”

Keith raised a brow in disbelief. He opened his own bottle and continued to watch as Lance wandered through this new terrain. His terrain.

“Ooooh neat!” Lance returned from somewhere below the foot of the bed with a soiled and well-loved Toy Story Woody doll.

It was one of those things Keith had never been able to make himself give up. He remembered writing a letter to Santa and asking for it, and on Christmas day, having received all the standard gifts from his foster family, new clothes, a stocking full of fruit and socks, and a few books about space, Toys for Tots delivered.

“I wanted that thing in the worst way,” he laughed, watching as Lance turned the doll over in his palm and pulled the string. The aging voice box eked out a tired and hollow, “Reach for the sky,” trailing off to its inevitable electronic death. Lance frowned and handed the toy back.

“It’s not a real pull string; he has batteries.” Keith set Woody on the windowsill. At one point in time, he’d actually believed in that message, that he could do anything, be anything with enough effort and commitment. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Or perhaps the problem was that he didn’t want enough, and that logic, drawn out to its inevitable conclusion indicated that the problem lay with his character, which, circuitously, meant that it was up to him to fix it. He pondered this as he took a sip of his cider and set it on the table, rearranging the cushions around it from the dismantled seating to sit without falling through into the storage compartments below.

Keith plopped himself down with the thought that perhaps having nothing left to do here, Lance would finally go.

Finishing off his drink, Lance took the path of most resistance, climbing then tripping over the table, landing half in Keith’s lap with hands pressed up against his shoulders.

Not amused, Keith held him at arm’s length, grabbing him by the wrists and holding him firmly in place. He smelled the salt and hops on Lance’s breath. Glassy eyes searched his, drowned like the depths of a deep-water trench with building pressure struggling to escape to the surface. Concern and confusion crossed Lance’s face, cutting furrows above his brow.

“You’re a lightweight, a terrible flirt, and you’re getting drunk.”

Lance looked as if he was about to say something, but Keith shook his head. Nothing more needed to be said.

He heard the raucous echo of conversation crescendo from a whisper at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t make out the muffled words. Excitement built in the voices and a pinpoint of cold, crisp, blue light came into sharp focus before encompassing everything in its vast pool.

Silence.

A solitary sphere of water hung as if suspended, absorbing and reflecting light as liquid iridescence before gravity kicked in and forced it down to meld into the encompassing blue. The crowning spray of the impact sputtered ripples outward through infinity. Other colors came and merged into the blue expanse, green, red, and yellow, all at once eclipsed by darkness. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling of the Airstream sparked with a crackle.

Both of them heard it, glancing up at the light.

With a heave, Keith shoved Lance away, completely disengaged. They sat perfectly still on the makeshift couch, staring at each other.

Lance licked his lips. “What was that?”

“Weird,” Keith replied without further explanation, although other words also sprang to mind. What was it Shiro had asked?  _ What do you think the Blue Paladin is? _

“Weird? If you want weird, let’s talk about Pidge’s conspiracy theories or Hunk’s tattoos or…” Having seemingly recovered himself, Lance raked a hand through his hair, turning to him tentatively. “Shiro’s space furry ex-boyfriend.”

Keith brushed his bangs out of his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me about  _ Vsevolod _ Sendak,” he said, enunciating the syllables slowly and carefully.

“Well, you know that’s not his real name, right?” Lance slyly intoned, twisting and pulling his leg up onto the cushion as he leaned in. He reached for the cider on the table, which happened to be Keith’s.

Keith let him have it, nodding. Lance intrigued him; he’d admit that much. The casual way he conducted himself so that nothing ever truly appeared to rile him was striking and notable. It was also certainly a front; people as superficial and changeable as water always were. He found himself wondering what the real Lance was like. Surely he’d caught glimpses here and there.

“-captor, but also protected him, probably conditioned him. Shiro says he can’t remember, and I believe him, but he went from the golden boy colonel to slicing sushi with a robotic hand that operates on some bizarre technology no one-” Lance babbled.

Realizing he’d fallen into his thoughts Keith forced himself to refocus and listen.

“Everything he thinks he knows about himself and everyone who ever cared about him, he read in a manila file folder on base after being retrieved from the middle of the desert. You know what else?” he finally stopped for breath and gripped Keith’s shoulder hard fingernails biting into the flesh beneath his shirt. “The signal that let us know he was out there had no known source.” He sighed and slumped back against the wall, head toward the ceiling. “Pidge was on comms that day and she couldn’t trace the origin. Then, maybe less than a week later, this big dude with a purple mohawk shows up and Shiro recognizes him. Shiro, who doesn’t know anybody, who doesn’t even remember me or Pidge or Hunk or anyone in his own fucking unit. Or his best friend. Or his own goddamned mother!”

Spittle flew off those last few words as he raised his voice unapologetically. Keith flicked it off his cheek and back at Lance.

Everything about Lance went back to the importance of family. His own by blood and the one he made. Here was a lesson in the kind of emotional turmoil those ties could bring.

He recognized the signs, knew that he was being drawn into it as well and that it was too late to back out.

This grand pursuit, having begun at 2 am at Denny’s diner had been bad news from the start. It might also be the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time. Possibly ever.

Cringing, Lance drew back, “Sorry.”

“Never apologize for your feelings.”

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything to you though,” Lance’s hand came away wet from rubbing his eyes. “I should go home.”

“No.” Keith wasn’t above taking his car keys. “You’re weepy, tipsy, upset, and justifiably so. Just go to sleep.” He scanned around looking for a blanket. One was soaking in a puddle in the pathway and they’d stepped on it several times already. On a top cabinet shelf, he found a military issue wool blanket and tossed it over.

“Where are you sleeping?”

“In the truck.” Keith let himself out, the door slamming shut behind him with a crash. He was not going to listen to Lance pratter at him all night or ask him fifty questions about why his mattress was outside and the bed broken.

He lay across the bench in his truck, door wide open and his feet hanging off the end. Red meowed to let him know she was there, hopping up and gingerly making her way along his legs to settle on his stomach.

Scratching behind her ears, Keith pulled out his phone. Nothing. What had he expected? No one ever called him anyway. That was inaccurate. It  _ used _ to be that no one called him. The last several days had been so strange by comparison. He texted Shiro.

**Hope you had a good night. Sleep well.**

_ I miss you. _

A few minutes later, his phone buzzed with a reply.

**Shiro: You too, babe.**

Babe? Where had that come from? He wasn’t sure he liked it.

**We need to talk.**

**Shiro: About what?**

**The Blue Paladin.**

But not tonight. Keith let his phone fall to the floor and rolled over onto his stomach. Red repositioned herself against his butt and curled up.

Sleep did not come fast enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As my first attempt at serial fic writing, this chapter kicked my butt. Hard. I got slammed with the realization there were things I should have been doing in the first two chapters that I had neglected to take care of but can’t really go back and fix now. Lesson learned I suppose.
> 
> Unrelated, I like writing Lance as older and somewhat more mature - mostly so I can take the animosity out of his relationship with Keith.


	5. Operant Conditioning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith had a birthday. Shiro needs to stop avoiding everything he doesn’t want to face. Pidge finds a weird radio signal. 
> 
> What's a Paladin?

Humankind has long tread through a sludge of oppression, greed, corruption, and violence, often progressing toward an unknown future.

The Saturn V rocket paved the way for the future of space exploration. In use from the Apollo 4 through Skylab 1 space missions, it was powerful enough to launch a crew out of Earth orbit with enough power to travel to the moon.

Selective history omits the fact that many scientists from Germany after the Second World War were brought to the United States to continue their work. Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V technology, was himself a member of the Nazi Party.

Leaving the context out of the achievement speaks volumes of ignorance and bias.

Call it “conditioning.”

 

+++

 

Yawning, palm pressed in above one creaking knee, Shiro eased himself down on the wrought iron staircase leading up to his landing. He rolled his shoulders, cracked his spine, and peeled his sweat-drenched tank off over his head. It would dry out soon enough, but right now it had to go. Using his teeth, he released the velcro straps on his wrist brace and shook it off into the dust.

“How can you possibly be tired? We just ran seven miles! You should be ready to go!” Keith double checked the distance on his app and flashed it at Shiro before returning to his post-run stretches, pulling his face to his shins with a deep breath. “It’s time to start the day.”

He almost asked Keith to turn around. This view was all vertebrae and the back of his head, t-shirt rumpled and rucked to his armpits, tiny red shorts pulling just a little too high, putting his shapely legs on full display. Shiro had just spent the entirety of the last hour and a half admiring how his tendons and muscles stretched and compressed, how his ribcage expanded and contracted with each separating pull of his breath. Keith ran as if some spark within had ignited, as if it were the only time he was truly free. Sunlight glistened off damp, glossy hair, and dawn reflected in his violet eyes. His form was perfect, his gait steady, and all Shiro could do was watch and try to keep up.

Fingers snapping in his face startled him back to the present. He straightened his back and blinked away the glaze over his eyes.

“Earth to Shiro. Come on; it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Keith rolled his shoulders and lay down with one knee up, casually crossing the other leg over.

From where he sat, Shiro could see Keith’s coordinating red briefs, the shapes and outlines on display for only him. He raised a brow, shifting for a better view. “Of course not. We should do this more often.” Why had he said that?

_ Those legs. _

Keith lifted his hips and thrust his hand deep inside the pocket of his shorts only to pull out his wallet, lighter, and cigarette case, setting them on his stomach. “Tomorrow, then. We should get into the habit while Allura’s got the restaurant closed.” His delivery was smooth and off-the-cuff, but the barely perceptible vein of smug satisfaction told Shiro they’d be running every day. Where did that stamina even come from?

Shiro supposed there were worse things he could be doing with his time.

They’d have at least a week. Shiro figured there must be a good reason for Allura to close shop for so long, though with her inclination toward caginess, Shiro doubted they’d ever get the full story behind her and Coran’s absence.

“Yeah.” It almost made sense. Out of curiosity, Shiro reached for Keith’s wallet and started rifling through the contents. Most people kept at least something personal with their cash and credit cards, but there wasn’t even a lucky fortune or a two-dollar bill.

Keith lit his smoke and watched him strangely, hesitating a moment before deciding what to say. “So, Blue Paladin.”

“What about it?” Shiro replied absently, but pointedly avoiding the question as he had been since that text the other night. He continued studying the fact sheet that was Keith’s driver’s license. Keith with short hair was adorable, if somewhat intense, but the picture looked like a mug shot. “You know, this Akira person had a birthday just last week. Why didn’t you tell me it was the 23rd?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

Shiro grunted. “We could have had a nice dinner. I would have baked you a cake and thrown you a party after closing, something. Now I just feel...” Shiro didn’t finish. If he had thought to ask, he was pretty sure Keith would have told him.

Regardless, Keith certainly wasn’t perturbed about it. He continued to lie there in the scrub, waiting for Shiro to continue.

“It’s a day to celebrate you. Aren’t you worth celebrating?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

He couldn’t tell if Keith was being facetious or dismally depressing. It was probably both.

Keith continued, “This conversation is ridiculous. Look, it’s just a birthday. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay, fine. Keith doesn’t have birthdays. I’ll make sure I put that on my calendar as a repeating note for October 23. At least you  _ get _ a birthday every year,” he grumbled.

“What do you mean-” Keith began, confused, then immediately brightened. “Oh! You’re a leap year baby!”

Shiro puffed his cheeks and sighed.

“Don’t pout. It makes you look grumpy, then again you’re what,” Keith did some quick math, “eight?”

“I am not eight!” Shiro shot back, huffing his indignation through his nose.

That lopsided grin was still there, and he couldn’t maintain the ruse any longer, shaking his head and failing at keeping a straight face. Something about Keith grounded him in a way no one else did. Keith didn’t approach him with predetermined expectations or compare him to a different version of himself, accepted him as he was, who he was, and  _ how _ he was.

It made him feel less artificial.

It made his life seem less contrived.

Reaching over, he plucked the cigarette right out of Keith’s mouth. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d smoked, and he coughed like a novice on the intake.

Keith cleared his throat.

“You should quit, you know,” Shiro said, regaining his composure. He had no idea how anyone could say this was an enjoyable habit and considered that he likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference had he just swallowed a mouthful of cinders.

“You’ve said as much before.”

“You go through what, a pack a day?”

“Something like that. Less.”

“Are you trying to kill yourself? I mean, everybody dies, but this will give you cancer. You’ll die a slow and painful death.”

Keith rolled his eyes.

It was such a juvenile reaction Shiro found himself assuming the parental tone he hadn’t used since his time in the service. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

Picking his head up, Keith yanked off the two elastic headbands holding his hair out of his face. “I’ve been smoking on and off since I was fifteen. I’m still alive. Lots of things can give you cancer: staying out in the sun too long, standing too close to a running microwave, breathing polluted air. If you live in the state of California, wearing headphones made in China might even give you cancer.”

“We are not going to discuss Proposition 65. At some point, you’ll wake up and realize there are more people concerned with your well-being than the singular miracle of nature that got you up in the morning.” Shiro wondered if he’d ever really thought about that; if anyone had ever straight up told him that self-destruction also hurts the people who care? Shiro suspected Keith’s upbringing had a lot to do with his way of thinking, but he also knew that somewhere along the line someone must have cared. Keith was a functional, educated adult, alive, and not in prison. All of those things went against the statistics for kids who had gone through the system.

Keith looped one of the elastics around his thumb and with his tongue between his teeth, aimed and shot it at Shiro. It bounced off his chest, and Keith snorted in laughter. “Miracle of nature? As in God? God, assuming the existence of a higher power, doesn’t care that much about this speck of dust. We are inconsequential to the mechanism of the universe.”

Shiro disagreed, but he was fairly certain he’d lose the debate.

Holding out his hand, Keith made no move to leave the ground. “Can I have my smoke back?”

“No.” Shiro examined the cigarette between his fingers. He took another drag, filling his lungs and expelling clouds of smoke through his nose, this time without hacking up a lung. It burned.

“Honestly, I just like the way it tastes.”

“Yeah, but I bet you couldn’t just drop the habit if you wanted to. Also, it makes  _ you _ taste like a chimney.”

Keith’s mouth fell open in protest, but he shrugged the concession. “You don’t have to kiss me.”

_ I like kissing you. _

From some secret napping place, Kuro emerged, padding out from under the first stair and rubbing himself against Shiro’s calf. He ran his hand from head to tail and scratched behind the velvet-fine ears before the cat hopped nimbly away to settle on Keith’s stomach.

Grunting, Keith shifted, face to face with his feline captor, “You’re heavy.”

“Solid.” Shiro proudly corrected. He loved that cat.

“Shiro?”

“Yeah?” By the somber tone, he knew it was coming. Again.

“Blue Paladin?”

Kuro placed his paw on Keith’s mouth. Keith immediately lifted it away.

Sighing audibly, Shiro resigned himself to the conversation. “All right, tell me about the Blue Paladin.” He was going to finish this cigarette if it killed him.

The cat jumped off as Keith pushed himself up off the dirt to a sitting position, brushing away the dust, gaze fixed on the sand as if staring hard enough might grow a garden at Shiro’s feet. It wouldn’t have fazed Shiro; he was himself an empty land, but if anyone could coax life from it, it would be Keith.

He’d simply argue that the life was already there. Shiro even heard it in Keith’s voice,  _ “Ninety-six percent of the universe is empty. That doesn’t mean it’s dead.” _

_ There’s hope for you yet, Shiro. _

“It’s Lance.”

The words cut through Shiro’s meandering thoughts. Had his brows rocketed any farther skyward, they would have taken flight. “Lance?” Keith’s delivery had been so impassive, Shiro was sure he had to be joking.

“Do you remember when I said the Blue Lioness stopped talking to me?”

“Yeah, and you said you thought it was because of me.”

“Right, and I still believe that. So, I told you Lance followed me home night before last and wouldn’t leave.”

Shiro nodded. “He got drunk and weepy and weird, and you said you left him in-“ his voice faltered, and his heart suddenly clenched, dropping into his stomach. Flustered, he attempted to collect his thoughts, “this isn’t, wait. What are you trying to tell me? Are you? Did you?” Too embarrassed to ask, the words wouldn’t come. He looked expectantly at Keith.

“Did I what?” Keith frowned, genuinely confused.

Was it possible the one night he’d asked to be alone, Keith had… He couldn’t even complete the thought, but he pictured it, Keith carrying Lance; dark, tanned legs wrapped around his pale waist as he entered, clinging tight for the duration of the deed, slick with sweat and panting together, eyes closed. Lance’s model-beautiful hands with their long, tapered fingers twisted like claws in Keith’s hair as if harping possessive over something he could never own. It made Shiro’s stomach churn.

Would Keith do that? Would Lance? His instinct screamed, “No!” 

Despite being perpetually mired in his own passivity, Shiro needed to cease the downward spiral of his internal dialogue. He didn’t want to do or say something he might later regret. He reminded himself that people could not be owned and basic nature never changed. Truth be told, Shiro wasn’t entirely sure what Keith’s beliefs were concerning monogamy in relationships. He didn’t seem to mind casual sex; he’d propositioned, after all. 

Why were things like this always complicated?

They hadn’t had a conversation about exclusivity. Shiro hadn’t thought he’d needed to. He was about to bring it up, but Keith spoke again.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me.” When Shiro said nothing, he went on. “Lance tripped, I caught him, and suddenly I could hear the voices again, well, all of them except the red one, but they weren’t talking to me.”

The cigarette burned down as he listened. Of course, Keith hadn’t done that. He needed to stop projecting his insecurities onto other people. He tapped off the ash and took a final drag before snuffing out the cherry in defeat, grinding it into the step.

He hadn’t known Keith heard multiple voices. How many different ones were hiding in there? There was the blue one, sure, but what about the rest? Were all of them coded by color? “Red one?”

Keith scrutinized his face, nodding slowly. “Are you all right?”

No. Shiro was tense and still sweaty, having worked himself up over something he didn’t need to, and now he was concerned over these mysterious voices. He grabbed his shirt and wiped his face. “I’m fine,” he said, recognizing immediately that his delivery had been too quick, too insincere. “Just fine.”

Keith continued; the suspicion in his eyes remained, but he didn’t bring it up again. “Red, blue, black, green, and yellow.”

Was it possible those were the voices of the five lions in the petroglyphs? Shiro decided to just let him keep talking.

Keith raked both hands through his hair. “Maybe it was just Lance’s emotional state or something, I have no clue how this stuff works, but it was like reality hit a kinetic wall, collapsed, then dissolved into total entropy before completely re-ordering itself again. I’m ninety-nine point nine percent certain it’s Lance. I know he felt it too. And you know what else?”

“What?” Shiro asked, but Keith hadn’t been waiting for a response.

“I was thinking about this yesterday when we were in the shower and-”

“When we were in the shower? You mean, during sex?” Not that it was surprising.

“No. Of course not. While you were pounding me into the tile, I was thinking about how hard it might be to do that in zero-g. This was after when you were washing my hair.”

The look of satisfaction with which Keith finished that sentence was so matter-of-fact, Shiro couldn’t help but laugh.

Keith shook his head. “I lost you back with the lions, didn’t I? Short version, the Green Paladin is Pidge.”

Blue and Green, Lance and Pidge. Shiro stopped. “Sorry. I  _ am _ listening.” Keith had his full attention now. He felt the same uncanniness as he had inside the cavern.

“When I went out to track that signal, uhm, when I met Pidge,” Keith hesitated to bring it up, “Blue - I’m just going to call her that - She told me I’d find the Green Paladin. That’s what I remembered in the shower. I was supposed to keep the Green Paladin out of trouble, and whatever was at the coordinates, the Blue Lioness, I guess, would help me -would help  _ us _ \- build something.”

“The giant mecha.” They’d both seen the glowing glyphs. The Lions made the robot, and now Keith was saying Lance and Pidge were supposed to be part of it.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Keith’s inability to be decisive about this was causing him distress, and Shiro had been ignoring it. “Is there anything to do?” he finally asked. He didn’t think there was, at least not yet. “There’s probably a green lion at least, so green and blue. By the same logic, there should be a lion for each of your colored voices,” The look Shiro received was stony and closed, and he knew he wouldn’t be climbing that wall anytime soon, so he went on, “but we don’t know anything else. How do you even research lion machines hiding in the desert?”

“Telluric currents? Native mythology? Historical ufology? Metal detectors?” Keith threw his hands up in exasperation. “There are options, but this might be the one time the internet turns up an empty waste of nothing.”

“Wait until they speak again?”

“I may have to.”

Something else occurred to Shiro. “Hey, Keith?” He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back, resting his elbows on the next step up.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think we’re paladins, too?” Keith had told him the lioness wanted to talk to him. She’d called him  _ Champion. _ What or who could he possibly be champion of? He hoped it was something good.

Keith pondered the question, gnawing at the inside of his cheek and chewing on his lip. “You might be,” he offered reluctantly.

“If I am,” Shiro reasoned, “then you definitely are.”

“I doubt it. I’ve always heard these voices. If they are the lions speaking, they might be using me as a conduit. Maybe my job is to find the paladins, only now-” he sighed. “We don’t even know what the purpose of these machines even is. Who do they belong to? Who built them? Why doesn’t the military know these things exist - or do they? What is the purpose of the paladin? What if I’m doing the wrong thing? What if all this is wrong?”

“Obviously, the paladin’s purpose is to pilot the lions. And those lions would be damned stupid not to choose you.”

Keith pressed his lips together, a hard line across his face. Eyes narrowed as he looked away. “I don’t want to be chosen.”

Personally, Shiro found the thought at once terrifying and thrilling. “Hate to break it to you, babe, but you’re something of a legend.”

“In whose circle?” Keith stood, stuffing his things back into his pocket. His fingers grazed deliberately over the back of Shiro’s hand as he reached for his wallet. “You know, test flying military aircraft isn’t all you seem to think it’s cracked up to be.”

It wasn’t? The truth was, Shiro didn’t know what to think.

 

+++

 

The text that appeared on Keith’s home screen came from an unfamiliar number.

**(XXX)XXX-XXXX: Hi. Pidge gave me your info. I hope that’s all right?**

**Which one are you?**

There weren’t many options. He already had Hunk in his contacts. That left Matt or Lance.

**(XXX)XXX-XXXX: Tall, dark, and handsome**

**Don’t know them.**

**(XXX)XXX-XXXX: Lance**

Sighing, Keith created a new entry. There wasn’t anything he could do about it now. He hoped Lance wasn’t as annoying with the phone as he was running his mouth.

**What’s up?**

**Lance: I think I lost my wallet in your hellscape.**

I didn’t see it, but I haven’t been there in a few days.

Keith didn’t particularly want to go hunting it down either, but he supposed he should. Then again, Lance had just called it a hellscape.

**Lance: Do you mind if I go out to look for it?**

**No.**

Good. That meant he didn’t have to leave. He’d managed to convince Shiro to purchase some folding lawn furniture and set it up in the living room of the annoyingly spartan apartment. For whatever reason, Shiro had executively nixed the idea of buying real furniture, which was disappointing. Keith had been angling for a trip to IKEA, where he’d be able to get the meatball dinner he’d been craving and a bag of imported Swedish fish. The ones made in Sweden tasted better than the ones in the barrel at the grocery store shipped directly from Canada.

**Lance: Is there anything I should avoid?**

**No.**

Good luck to Lance. If he were honest with himself, he didn’t know where most of his things were in that mess. Not even important things like his diplomas, the titles to his vehicles and the camper, his social security card, or his birth certificate.

**Lance: Okay.**

Then, a few minutes later,

**Lance: Thanks, mullet.**

_ Whatever. _

Keith put his phone down. Although he was sure Shiro would eventually kick him out, he wasn’t ready to leave. Even if it wasn’t a long drive, here, he enjoyed a healthy appreciation for air conditioning, working appliances, a bed, and most importantly, being wanted.

Want as opposed to need implied a choice and individual agency, and being the object of someone else’s affection was something to take advantage of before it was gone again as unexpectedly as it had arrived.

Several days of bliss came and went, pre-packaged in the form of a six foot some-odd inch tall man with soft lips, a gentle hand, and a heart so big the very stars might move if he asked them to.

Keith harbored a suspicion that the figurative stars realigned themselves for Shiro in a very real sense. There was a shift around his being that was difficult to place, and perhaps that was part of what had originally attracted Keith to him in the first place. Something about his aura was hazy and dissonant, suppressed.

_ You are just as lost as I am. _

He couldn’t help but notice the way Shiro looked at him sometimes as if surprised to find him still there. At the same time, he was stuck fast in the holding pattern of a regular system with companion celestial bodies all coplanar and orbiting together.

He just didn’t know who or what they were orbiting.

There had to be a sun.

He didn’t bother putting more thought into it. For now, he focused on enjoying the time he had. He worked on his book, managing to rough out one chapter and completely rework another before convincing himself that he should edit later and focus on getting the rest of the text drafted first.

Keith needed his books and research files. He’d been meaning to scan his handwritten notes and papers so he wouldn’t have to worry about losing anything, but he didn’t have a scanner and kept forgetting to take the folders to the copy store.

After some internal agonizing, he concluded that he would have to go back to his camper after all. He could grab his research files, another change of clothes or three, and his straight razor. The plastic throwaways from the convenience store were questionably effective. Shiro had offered use of his electric shaver, but after one attempt, Keith had concluded that he could not use it. The obnoxious spit and crackle combined with the bizarre sensation of having his face gnawed off by a miniature meat grinder ranked it, in his book, among the worst inventions ever to disgrace men’s grooming. Why Shiro loved the thing, he would never understand.

Was it a simplicity issue?  _ You do not need two hands to shave. _

At least Lance must have found the missing wallet since he hadn’t heard anything more about it.

He knocked on the bathroom door, just as the shower tap shut off. “Hey, Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to run over to my Airstream for a few things. Do you need anything while I’m out?” He leaned against the doorframe, cheek pressed against the painted wood.

“Hold on a sec.”

Several long minutes later, Keith was about to knock again when Shiro emerged, steam drifting out at a crawl from behind him. “I think my shirt shrank.” He tugged at the too-small t-shirt that stopped above his navel and pulled across his chest, puckering over his sternum and wrinkling beneath his arms.

Keith had to bite his lip to keep from laughing, reaching up to scratch his nose and indelicately sniffing as his eyes drifted to the towel tucked loosely around Shiro’s hips. “That’s because it’s mine.”

He could practically hear the gears turn in Shiro’s skull as he processed, realization grinding to a stuttering halt. Folding his arms over his chest, Keith continued his appraisal.

“Oh, well, no wonder it doesn’t fit then.”

“It’s also inside out.” Reaching for Shiro’s hand and elbow, Keith drew him close, hands gliding over his hips, arms wrapping around his waist. “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”

Reaching out, Shiro brushed Keith’s hair out of his face, searching, “No.”

What was he looking for?

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Shiro shook his head, holding Keith close, resting his chin on waves and loose curls. “Just a dream, but you were in this one. We were working in flight simulators for manned deep space exploration at some international space academy. It was just odd; I don’t think you could have been much more than eighteen and I certainly wasn’t that much older.” He ran his fingers through Keith’s perpetually tangled hair, working out the knots and smoothing it down unsuccessfully.

“So what happened?” The regular rhythm of Shiro’s heart beat softly beneath his ear.

“We got caught with our pants down. In the cockpit.”

“Let me make sure I got this right. You’re saying you didn’t sleep last night because you had a dream where you and I were caught having sex in the cockpit of a flight simulator?”

Shiro nodded. “I was your superior officer.”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. I woke up.”

“And you didn’t get me up to reenact the scenario?”

“You were sleeping so soundly; I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll make sure I do next time if that’s what you want.” Shiro leaned back ever so slightly, just enough to tilt Keith’s head to his as he bent down, sultry lidded eyes, to marry their pliant lips in a messy clash of tongues and teeth.

It never ceased to amaze Keith the way his whole chest seized up, warmth spreading through his limbs and prickling at the nape of his neck. He reached for Shiro’s hand and drew it around behind himself; guiding beneath the waistband of his jeans.

Resurfacing for air, Keith looked up, Shiro’s bottom lip between his teeth as they parted until it snapped back in place. He walked his fingers up Shiro’s chest, foreheads together, noses just barely touching. “You should take a nap while I’m gone.”

Shiro protested weakly, “I’m not  _ that _ tired!” he murmured, but his posture gave him away, lazily nuzzling Keith, drinking him in, dropping down just enough to plant soft kisses on his neck and slowly rubbing the soft skin beneath the small of his back.

“I want you rested,” Keith replied, then adding, “For later.” It would probably take him a few hours at least.

“Mmmhmm.” Still holding tight, Shiro nipped and tugged at Keith’s earrings with his teeth. He ended with a kiss in the sensitive spot just behind the hinge of Keith’s jaw, “Could you also maybe do me a favor?”

Frowning and trying not to melt, Keith hissed as he inhaled against the warm, wet comfort of Shiro’s tongue. If he didn’t leave soon, he wouldn’t and stepped back just enough for Shiro to let him go. “Depends.”

“Matt’s got something I’ve been meaning to pick up. I think he’s going out later, so if you wouldn’t mind, could you grab it first?”

Keith found the request odd. Shiro had spent several hours with Matt just the other day, why couldn’t he have brought it home then? Why couldn’t Matt just drop it off? Keith had his bike and not his truck. Hopefully, it wasn’t large. “What am I getting?”

“Something.”

Keith nodded slowly. He suspected this had something to do with him.  _ Fine. _ “Okay.”

As it turned out, not only did Matt have a large cardboard box with “FRAGILE!” scrawled multiple times in red ink on all four sides waiting for him as promised, but he also wanted to chat. By the end of it, Keith realized there was a reason Matt had been a communications officer, his gift of gab obstructionist at its finest. It was at least two hours after he left Shiro’s apartment before he was finally on his way with the box rope tied and bungeed to the back of his motorcycle.

The first thing he noticed as he approached the campsite was Lance’s Civic parked right behind Hunk’s Sahara. What were visitors doing at his desert abode?

Easing his bike forward, Keith peered around the vehicles. He hardly recognized the place, though it was definitely his, with his beat-up truck and scrubby Airstream. All of it was gone, the tarps and piles, even the gross mattress that he’d been meaning to toss for ages had disappeared. The remains of the NASA decals were now entirely discernible beneath the propped out awning, providing an eerie backdrop for a spread spanning two folding tables with make-shift tablecloths of novelty constellation fabric and the words, “Happy Birthday Keith!” strung up above, swaying gently in the stale air. In this surreal scape, each letter clung tenuously against gravity, ready to drop to a certain demise where the ground below was the Earth and they all burned up on reentry.

All it needed was wind chimes.

This was Shiro’s doing.

Many years had passed since anyone had thrown him a birthday party. He hadn’t realized Shiro would be so upset about not knowing. Why was his own birthday so important anyway? Allura had hired him just a few days later and had said nothing. He felt as if his heart had dropped out of his chest and it was too hot to handle, to scoop up and stuff back in. It was pooling at his feet, turning to flowing magma. A part of him wanted to leave it, yet he couldn’t avoid it either. It was, after all, his heart.

He assumed Lance and Hunk must be inside, but from where he stood, the short trek to his door was a path of lonely exile, the pale red-gold of the land washed out by the bright light of the sun in a dull and stagnant sky.

Garlands of tiny stars in silver and gold draped over the twisted branches of his Joshua tree, and he remembered that the tree was the reason he’d asked for this particular site. Its plight was much like his own, surviving in a place of isolated independence. Both of them were, at their core, the same, carbon life forms composed of simple atoms arranged in perfect harmony to form a complex creation.

Shiro’s living room lawn furniture now made sense, arranged in a tight semicircle around the fire pit, fully within the shade cast by the camper. Following the line of the enveloping shadow to the top of the roof, he noticed that the fans were running, which meant that by some miracle, the air conditioning was working again. A large antenna was newly mounted near the rear of the camper; there had always been a place for one, but when he’d acquired the Airstream, it had already been removed. This addition had to be Pidge’s or possibly Hunk’s idea. He found himself suddenly curious about what might be going on inside.

Cutting the engine, he kicked down the stand and slid off the seat.

The care that had gone into this touched him, but it implied a commitment and not just for himself. Someone, rather multiple someones, had taken the time to set this up, to do something for him and not because they had to. He was still an outsider.

Keith swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat remained with the same sort of giddy lightheadedness that came with anticipation and a figurative punch to the gut. He needed a smoke, but only managed to get so far, cigarette between his lips and searching for his lighter, when Shiro shouldered out the screen door backward. He missed a step down, and it was only by some dumb luck, that he managed not to lose the contents of the platter in his hands. For the first time Keith had seen that week, he was wearing his prosthetic.

Shiro recovered himself, breaking into a grin when he saw Keith. “You made it!”

“I guess I did,” Keith mumbled, lighting up.

“Matt texted me when you left. I thought I still had a good fifteen minutes,” he looked at his watch. “You drive fast.” Shoving aside some of the foil-covered dishes, Shiro made room for the one in his hands and set it down. He pointed to the box, still secured to the motorcycle. “That it?”

Keith nodded, following him over to fetch it.

“Everyone else is waiting for you inside.”

He heard the words and respired with a practiced calm as Shiro ushered him on ahead into what was technically his home. Two faces greeted him, preventing him from following after Shiro, who disappeared with the box beyond the repaired sliding screen leading into the camper’s bedroom just past the tiny bathroom. Hunk looked up from behind the small pile of wrapped gifts stacked on the table. Lance paused mid-sentence, hands smacking the Formica surface as he stood.

“And so the king of the palace arrives.”

_ The palace, huh? _ Keith found himself at a loss. He’d been right about the AC; it was comfortable inside. On general inspection, things were put in their places. The mini fridge was tucked away in its cubby, the stove and oven reassembled, the light fixtures replaced. He could only assume that all of it worked because there was evidence of cooking, but someone had left refrigerable items on the cleared-off counter space in the galley. His tattered and Scotch-taped poster had been framed and mounted on the wall behind the reassembled table. Someone had taken the time to reupholster the cushions in cheerful red canvas, and hang matching curtains at the windows with ivory sheers. Most notably, the shell of the camper must have been repaired and resealed because the interior caps had been fixed back in place and wiped clean.

In fact, just about everything had been scrubbed, right down to the black and white checker pattern of the worn linoleum floor tiles.

Opposite the kitchenette, another curtain hung, pulled aside to reveal the communications panel. Keith had never bothered trying to make it work and had subsequently treated it as just another wall space. Pidge sat before it on a small rolling stool, headset plugged into the wall as she tuned a knob to a lower frequency and adjusted the volume control. The lights were on, and a steady hum emanated from within; she had it running at least.

“Hey Hunk?” she asked.

“Whatcha need?” Hunk reached for the bag of tools on the bench beside him.

“I think I need to open up the lower panel again,” she began, swiveling around in her seat, and nearly falling off backward when she spotted Keith. “You!” she pointed, wrenching her headset off with her other hand.

Keith nearly choked on his cigarette. “Me?” He pressed his hands to his heart in abashed feign.

“These guys didn’t tell me you live in the Apollo 13 mobile quarantine unit. This radio is amazing, even if it is nearly half a century old! I’ve been working on it for three days straight. I had to build a new antenna, but I made some upgrades, and I think I’ve almost got it operational.”

While Keith nearly pointed out that he didn’t need this radio to work since he could plug into the ATA if he wanted, it occurred to him that perhaps the point had to do less with the object itself and the fact that Pidge was doing something she enjoyed.

“Don’t give yourself all the credit, short stuff.” Hunk grinned, leaning over the table and passing her a Phillips-head.

“Fine. This guy,” she thumbed over to Hunk, “rewired everything and fixed your backup generator.”

Keith looked from Pidge to Hunk. “I’m not sure what to say.”

Hunk raised his shoulders and let them fall again. “It’s pretty basic. That one light?” he went on, pointing to the overhead lamp closest to the door. “That one was live.”

He wasn’t sure how to navigate this generosity of spirit. Not having an immediate reply, he watched as Shiro reemerged from the bedroom, pulling the screen shut behind him. Keith had never slept in it, mostly because the mattress had looked like a crime scene, and once he’d removed it, he’d never gotten around to repairing the bed frame. He pointed to the screen with its image, a stretched batik with the full moon off-set over a background of clouds and stars. “Is that closed off for a reason?” He already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Shiro said.

Palpable anticipation hung heavy in the air.

“Uhm, this is okay, right?” Lance asked, first to break the silence.

Hunk eyed him and carefully slid out of the bench to check something baking in the oven. The warm, sweet scent of rising batter permeated everything as soon as he opened the door.

“What’s okay?” Keith asked.

“You know.” Lance spread his arms wide, palms up. “This.”

_ Oh. Right. _ He killed the ember of his cigarette in the sink and left the butt there. His fingertips glided across the countertop, as he surveyed the trailer. His gaze fell on the contraption replacing his washing machine. It looked like a combination washer dryer.

“Shiro found that on Craig’s List,” Hunk offered. “I couldn’t fix your washer door. Something had cracked the window and bent the seal.”

Keith glanced at Pidge, wondering if she had told him what had actually happened to it. “You know, I really don’t know what to say other than thank you, and that doesn’t seem like enough.”

“It’s enough,” Shiro affirmed.

“So,” Lance began again. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah. It’s really nice.” Keith sat down, sliding in next to Hunk. “Did you find your wallet?” He couldn’t resist asking, considering now that it had probably been a ruse.

“Yeah. It was in my car.”

_ So, it had been missing? _

Pidge finally turned off the radio. She elbowed Lance to make room opposite Keith around the table and slid the small pile of packages across to him.

He looked at the gifts, wondering if he was supposed to start opening them when Shiro came to his rescue with another immediate concern.

“You all know I made us burgers and we need to eat them, right?”

 

+++

 

Bellies full, Hunk went back inside, beckoning them in sometime later to a cake, candles lit and arranged in the numerals of his precious years of life.

Suddenly, this confirmation seemed a heavy burden to bear. Thirty hadn’t hit him until that moment. How had he even gotten to be thirty? Where were his salaried job, domestic spouse, and children? Surely thirty couldn’t happen without those things. Who knew, but at least on some level, he’d managed to survive. There wasn’t a price to represent the worth of that, every minute alive was uniquely invaluable.

He almost cried when they sang, the off-key sincerity of their four voices, and when it was over, he blew out the candles.

“I hope you like chocolate,” Hunk cut the cake, handing him the first and largest piece. “To tell the truth, we weren’t sure you even like cake.”

“You have to have cake at a birthday party,” he’d replied, but hardly had time to take a bite before the first of the wrapped packages was shoved into his hands.

At the end of it, he’d received at least ten pairs of socks, each in a different space or cryptid theme from Pidge, a framed needlepoint portraying a tilled but empty garden with the phrase, “Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it, and see that it is barren,” and infrared binoculars courtesy Hunk. All in all, a good haul. He leaned back, surveying his treasures when Shiro took him by the hand, ever warm.

“One more.”

Like an unsuspecting child to a candy shop, Keith allowed himself to be led away toward the bedroom. No one followed, making him even more curious as to what had been hidden away. Or what Shiro might have planned to do with him.

“Now,” Shiro turned to face him, stoic and serious. “I’d like to ask one more favor of you today.”

“Go on.”

“Close your eyes?”

He did as requested, receiving a kiss on the forehead for compliance. The screen glided quietly on its track into the pocket. Still so careful to not touch him with the prosthetic hand, Shiro covered his eyes and bumped the back of his thigh with a knee to urge him forward.

A few steps in and they stopped.

“Not yet.”

He was left standing. Something rustled in a corner and the supple slink of a cat wound smooth as water between his ankles. “Red?”

“She hasn’t wanted to leave.”

“You have to leave a window cracked for her. She probably didn’t want to get shut out, but you can’t keep her in either.  _ I don’t keep food out for her _ . I tried once, and she didn’t want it. I mean, I share food with her if she asks, but most of the time she fends for herself.” He caught himself babbling, but he imagined being trapped inside hungry or put out altogether were terrifying thoughts for the old girl.

“Keith?”

“Yeah?” Restless, he tapped his toe against the floor.

“Don’t worry. We put a cat door in for her.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t noticed.

Shiro took his hand again, folding his fingers. Running his thumb over Keith’s knuckles, he pressed them to his lips, tonguing the hills and valleys. “You hate not being in control, don’t you?”

It was more of a statement than a question and protesting what happened to be true wasn’t worth the effort.

“I can be patient.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Before he could reply, a soft caress of lips met his, and he raised himself up on the balls of his feet. As unexpectedly as it had come, Shiro pulled away and put his mouth to Keith’s ear. “You can open your eyes now.”

With the shades drawn over the panoramic windows, pinpoints of yellow light like motes of stardust filled the space. They sparkled in mimicry of the nighttime sky. Constellations danced the slow waltz of their trek across the heavens with the turning of the earth.

Shiro scratched the back of his neck, as Keith took in the sight. “I know you can just buy these, but I wanted to make it. The globe is starched rice paper. Matt helped. I’m not so great with crafts.”

Keith’s eyes darted to the source, a black lacquered base, very slowly rotating with a paper globe where tiny holes had been punched throughout the entire surface. He followed the lights back to the walls and the ceiling. “It’s perfect.”

“It’s the night I met you.”

The gesture at once sappy and presumptive caught him breathless and unaware.

“It wasn’t that long ago.” Keith sat down on the edge of the bed, and it was a bed,  _ his _ bed with a moderately firm mattress and what felt like a down comforter. This might be why Shiro had been so hell-bent on not going to IKEA. He kicked off his boots and pulled up his feet to sit cross-legged. “I saw this hot guy and let my laptop battery run down so I’d have an excuse to talk to him. I mean,” he said, pushing off one untied boot then the other with his toes. “How else am I going to get laid at two am in a Denny’s diner?”

Shiro settled beside him, rubbing his back. “As I recall, you didn’t.”

“Nope. I’m okay with that though. It just wasn’t the right time.” He didn’t know how to say what he wanted Shiro to know. It was as if a great rift had existed somewhere inside him that he hadn’t even known until now when it was suddenly being filled.

“Me too.”

“Hey,” Pidge knocked against the wall, rattling the screen, mismatched stocking feet visible just below. “The ice cream is melting, and Keith still hasn’t eaten his cake.”

They looked at each other as she rapped again, “It’s too quiet in there. Are you two still alive?”

 

+++

 

Flames danced and crackled from the fire pit; embers spat upward, tiny fireworks exploded and drifted upward on the breeze with the evening chill approaching. Keith flicked the remainder of his cigarette into the campfire. He emptied his bottle of cider and stretched his legs as he set it on the ground.

Pidge had unearthed his acoustic guitar, and it sat in the open case beside him. He’d acquired it from his father’s things and had somehow managed to hang onto it. The body was scratched and battered, and the finish on the neck was worn through, but it played, and that was what mattered.

“No suggestions?” he asked, picking the guitar gently up, fingertips following the dips and swells of the instrument’s curves.

“I have a vague idea of what music you like, but that knowledge is based entirely on the handful of band tees, CDs, cassette tapes, vinyl LPs, and,” she enunciated the last one carefully, “ _ 8-tracks _ I found in there.” She thumbed toward the camper. “What’s your favorite?”

He thought about it for a moment, cradling the body of the guitar lovingly beneath his arm. He ran a fingernail backward over the strings, head bowed to the neck, tuning to ear. Out of practice, he’d have to rely on muscle memory and launched himself into the first discordant notes, continuing through the lead into the melody line.

The sound of his own voice was a familiar comfort, and he cleared his throat to project. It came forth a quiet ebb against the tide of the oncoming sunset. The strings sang at his caress, carrying their vibrato out through the sustains.

Hunk and Lance listened in silence, Shiro with a guarded wariness until he recognized the song, but Pidge knew all the words and unable to stand it any longer began, softly at first, to add harmony to the refrain.

“ _ I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon _ .”

The lonely feeling in the pit of his stomach eased as they continued together.

Shiro’s lips parted, slack-jawed as he listened, abject suspicion reflected in his gray eyes, gaze locked to Keith’s. He knew.

“ _ You raise the blade; you make the change; _

_ You rearrange me ‘til I’m sane. _

_ You lock the door and throw away the key; _

_ There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me. _ ”

For Keith, this remained perhaps the most memorable track from the seminal album of Pink Floyd’s career. He’d forgotten how relevant it was as the words caught in his throat and cracked through his delivery. He determined to finish as if compelled rather than from any desire of his own. Chills ran up his spine as he shuddered his way through, heat rising in his face as he blinked it away.

“ _ And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear; _

_ You shout, and no one seems to hear. _ ”

It was a subconscious plea for his own humanity, before he lost touch with his own reality, knowing it was as futile as running after the sun. Pidge slapped the lid on the cooler, adding the drum beats to the acoustic simplicity as they pressed on.

Hunk joined in, curling his large fingers into fists and spreading them out again to hold his head in his hands.

“ _ And all you create and all you destroy _ ,”

Then Lance.

“ _ And all that is now and all that is gone _ .”

Swallowing back his trepidation, Adam’s apple bobbing, Shiro finally sang.

“ _ And all that’s to come, and everything under the sun is in tune, _

_ But the sun is eclipsed by the moon _ .”

With the last few notes of a forced resolve, he slumped back in the chair. His breath escaped in a low rasp, his muscles gelled and limp as if he’d just run a marathon. He wiped the dampness that had leaked out the corners of his eyes and the moisture from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Silence fell eerily over the early evening, blanketing the desert in a mantle of yellow clouds. Shiro stared at him, the lyrics a near-perfect allegory for the parts of their lives they already shared.

Hunk bent forward, elbows on his knees at the edge of his seat. Lance lay back in the lounge chair, arms folded behind his head as he shut his eyes.

“You know,” Lance said, turning his head toward them, “I-”

The sudden loud, sharp, regular beeping of the radio cut him off. Pidge must have left it on.

She shot up, rigid, and immediately sprinted for the Airstream.

_ What is she trying to find? _

Keith ran after her, throwing the door wide with Hunk, Lance, and Shiro at his heels. She already had her headset on and was jacking a cable from the radio into her laptop, checking something on her computer screen.

“What is it, Pidge?” Lance asked, canting forward for a better view of her screen.

“I need a clearer signal. We have to find the source! This is the same set of S-band frequencies as the last transmissions the base received from my dad!” She’d grabbed a pen and was scrawling a chain of numbers along the inside of her forearm. “The pattern’s different, but the sounds indicating pauses between the phrase repetitions are the same. I just- I need more data.”

_ Of course.  _ Keith understood. If their places had been swapped, he wouldn’t have been able to maintain his calm. Pidge’s father might be out there, and even the slightest glimmer of hope in the dense vastness of despair was worth the greatest effort. At one time, if he’d been offered the chance to help his dad back to a figurative grounding, no matter how improbable or tenuous, he’d have seized it, too. “We have a radio receiver right here, you just tell us where we need to go.” Keith glanced around at Hunk, Lance, and Shiro, pulling the door shut behind them. “How far away do we have to be?”

“I don’t know.” Keys clacked as she typed furiously on the keyboard. “For some reason, I’m not able to get an exact angle on the incoming signals. I can’t approximate the point of origin without a second reading.”

For a moment, he entertained the thought of calling his contact at SETI with this data set, but something told him not to. They probably already knew, and it might be better to avoid questions. Especially for something related to the disappearance of a civilian scientist declared dead with no evidence or further explanation.

“Okay.” He looked around, taking the lack of a reply as affirmation. “Pidge, you get us a location. Shiro, Lance, clean up then tie down everything in here. Lock the cabinets, disconnect the water supply, and check the generators are properly secured. I haven’t moved this beast in a long time. Hunk, come with me. I’m going to need your help getting her hooked up to the truck.”

Lance leaned back against the table, fist to open palm. “Let’s blow this joint.”

 

+++

 

“Lance and Pidge in the back, Hunk, Shiro up front with me,” Keith directed, climbing in and sliding all the way over. Shiro wondered if he ever planned to fix the driver’s side door.

_ Probably not. _

Pidge folded up her knees and buckled herself in, but Lance stopped looked skeptically at the empty jump seat and cramped space behind the bench. 

“I’m supposed to fit back here?”

“Can you drive stick?” Keith retorted, spreading his fingers wide as he tugged on his fingerless gloves.

“Fine,” Lance grumbled, borrowing Keith’s shoulder for support as he swung his legs over the back of the bench.

Hunk followed with a sigh, squeezing himself in, knees against the center dash below the over-full ashtray. Keith hurried to clean up, dumping the contents into one of the many fast food bags from under the bench and then stuffing it away again, chewing the inside of his cheek with mild embarrassment. 

The headache that had been throbbing through Shiro’s sinuses all day was approaching an acuteness that was making it hard to focus. He pressed his thumb and middle finger to the bridge of his nose to relieve the pressure.

“Shiro?” Keith leaned forward, past Hunk, raking his hair out of his face and securing his ponytail with the usual band from around his wrist. Shorter bits of choppy fringe and wisps framed his face, the dipping sun behind crowning him with its orange-red corona.

If Shiro had ever seen a sight more compelling, he didn’t remember it now. He stood there, transfixed.

“You coming?”

Yes. Yes, he was.

“C’mon man, get in the truck.” Hunk extended his hand. Shiro clasped it with his own, gripping the top of the doorframe with his prosthetic and heaving himself up.

He stretched his legs. Everything hurt, his joints creaking and complaining, likely from the morning runs, little sleep, and a year spent grinding his body back down to the elements from which he’d been formed like some kind of new-age gladiator.

_ Champion. _ It wasn’t much of a metaphor.

He slammed the door shut and tried to relax, mechanical fingers closed around the grab handle as they rumbled away from the site and off onto the main road.

Able to see their reflections in the mirrors and the windshield, he watched. Pidge scrolled through her data. “We’re going to have to go farther afield than I’d thought, but…”

“But what?” Lance asked elbow propped on the back of the bench between Hunk and Shiro.

“Well, I’ve also got a relay, I think. Right now it’s all garbledygook, but if we head toward it, I should be able to get a clearer recording.” Pidge typed furiously on her keyboard. “Maybe,” she amended. “I think it’s moving.”

“That might be why you’re having trouble with it.” Keith tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “Can you tell how fast it’s moving?”

She shook her head and adjusted her headset. “No.”

“We’ll go to the relay then. Will that be sufficient to get another reading?” Keith glanced up to the rearview, meeting her eyes.

“Should be,” she replied.

“Okay. Coordinates?”

“Uhm,” Pidge tapped her chin, fingers clacking away on the keyboard. “ Latitude: 37.714245, Longitude: -116.525545.”

“Hey Hunk, will you pull that up on my map, please.” Keith shifted to reached into his pocket, the truck and its cargo never wavering from the straight path of the road. He passed his phone to Hunk, unlocking it with his thumb.

“What’s the location again?” Hunk asked, navigating through Keith’s inherent disorganization. Shiro noted several red markers labeled on the screen across the desolate landscape.

Squeezing over the bench between Hunk and Keith, Pidge reached down and input the values. “It looks like we’re going to be heading close to the base.”

“Northwest of here?” Keith asked, craning his neck to see around Pidge for confirmation.

Hunk pushed her back, one hand against her forehead as she protested, then enlarged the map on the screen. “Yeah.”

After shifting into fourth, Keith pulled Hunk’s hand over for a better look. “That’s really close to the western perimeter. I’m going to take us around the north side then cut southeast once we’re far enough away to not pull interest. Still have a lock on the signal?”

“Yep. Still there.”

“‘Kay.” Keith checked his mirrors and smashing his foot to the brakes, let out an atonal, “Hang on,” before accelerating again, turning the wheel, drifting the truck, and its massive haul around a ninety-degree turn with the ease of a sports car. The pickup, load, and cargo rocked, and a wave of dust and grit sluiced up beside them as Keith forced her onto the dirt road.

Shiro clung to the door, sliding into Hunk who was doing his best to avoid the falling into the stick and pinning the driver to the door.

Lance screamed, falling forward into Pidge then slamming back into the shell of the cab. “Are you trying to kill us?” Bracing himself between the bench and the back of the cab with his knees, he frantically searched for his seatbelt. Smirking knowingly, Pidge tightened her shoulder harness, sharing the look with Shiro. She jabbed her glasses back up her nose and tore her eyes away.

“I told you to hang on!” Keith grinned, raising his voice in reply over the rumble of the engine.

Pidge smirked side-eyeing Lance from her seat. “You’re just uncomfortable because you don’t know how to handle driving anything larger than your Civic.”

“Oh, come on! Pidge-” Lance started.

Shiro watched silently from his seat.  Even in the waning light, Shiro saw the upward curve at the corner of Keith’s mouth, the intensity of his bright eyes, focused on the unused path carving through the landscape, the tendrils of his dust-streaked hair, raked through by the wind as they drove on into the dawning eve.

“Shiro?” Keith asked.

Any response would have destroyed the moment. He wanted to make sure he would remember. The thought that he might go to sleep and forget every part of his life up to that very moment plagued him waking and sleeping like the dreams he sometimes he had that he couldn’t bring himself to share.

Hunk leaned over, amused. “I think he’s left earth. Good luck reaching him. Completely besotted.”

“That’s the second time tonight,” Keith said quietly, his voice a muffled thrum in Shiro’s head as if listening from someplace underwater. He tried, but something tugged at his memory. If only he could lift whatever shroud had settled over it. Before his eyes, this present vision of Keith bled out into the background, a thick, nebulous matter that permeated everything and suppressed his senses. He heard the static of a communique, or was it the faint vestige of the feed through Pidge’s laptop barely audible over the roar of the engine?

“Mission control to Shiro?”

There it was again, the hissing dispatch a bubbling corrosion eating through his neurons, frying the network over the surface of his brain, but this was Keith and not some chemical delusion. Shiro saw him as he was in so many of the dreams, tinted visor down, scrapes and dents across the shell of his armor with the telltale red accents.

In these visions, he always wore red.

Red. Like a crisp apple picked fresh from an orchard or a buzzing neon light in a storefront window. Red, the color of a bleeding heart.

What had Keith said about Red?

He couldn’t concentrate over the banter, Rules of Engagement or something like that.

“Hey.” Lance shook his arm, gripping him tight. “You okay there?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the grains of dust accumulated from the day out of his eyes. “I’m just tired.” He tried to recover himself.

Pidge snapped her head up from her screen. “Rule Number One: Don’t be stupid.”

“Rule Number Two?” prompted Keith.

“See Rule Number One,” Pidge replied.

“Rule Number Three?” Hunk asked.

“Don’t. Get. Caught.” Lance filled in, patting Shiro on the shoulder as he pronounced each word slowly and succinctly.

Yeah right. Chances were high someone already knew they were listening.

 

+++

 

The exodus from the truck was an abortion by induction. All of it, the truck, the trailer, Keith, came to a grinding halt. The five of them clambered forth from the safety of the womb, jostled and rattled, having had no time to recover or prepare for the deployment.

Pidge made for the Airstream, loaded down with her equipment, precariously balancing the load in her arms as she grappled with the catch on the door. Keith scaled the cap over the truck bed and with a running start, leaped to the top of the camper, landing lightly, but slipping toward the side on the soles of his worn-out boots. He caught himself, hands and knees to the curved aluminum as he crawled forward to right the antenna.

When he’d finished, he knocked on the casing and threw the roof hatch, kneeling down, head through the opening into the illuminated cabin. “Got it back up?”

Punching buttons and adjusting knobs, Pidge raised an index finger to his lips for silence as she tuned the receivers.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “YEAH!” this time yelling her excitement. Turning up the volume, they could make out the static of a foreign tongue, clearer than before but still a static buzz.

Pidge shook her head. “I don’t know of a single- I can’t- What even is this?” She struggled, at a loss for words, coaxing the alien verse from the archaic machine. “What did we find?”

“We? You, Pidge. You found it.” Keith listened, absently chewing the inside of his lip until he bit through and the salty, metallic taste of blood spilled inside his mouth.

Garbled as it was, he heard it, a dialect of sound he knew from an all too familiar discourse.

_ “Paladin.” _

It came like the voices he heard waking and dreaming, the Blue Lion in her cavern, waiting. His heart hammered against his ribs, blood rushed with each pulse through his ears. Momentary dizziness seized him, and he had to catch himself to keep from falling.

The door crashed open, and Shiro stumbled through, panting, his brows furrowed and one eyelid twitching, pale as if he’d seen a ghost. “That sound. Is that from the signal?” Perspiration soaked through his plain black t-shirt.

_ Shit. _

“Yes,” Keith licked his lip and sucked on the blood to make it stop. “Shiro, what is it?”

Shiro’s lips were a tight seam across his face, and he shook his head, unable to put it to words.

Keith sighed, turning back to Pidge. “Can you pick up the transmission angle?”

“Lock the antenna to the base. The lever’s up there on your right.” Her voice rode a line of desperate impatience. “Hurry!”

Shiro inclined his head, pleading in agreement with silent desperation.

That look was almost enough to cause physical pain. It might have been that visceral for Shiro, but he would never say. Swallowing hard, Keith left the hatch and did as instructed. The entire contraption immediately rotated and pivoted to a better angle.

“Got it!” Pidge shouted as Keith peered back down into the camper. She scrawled the information down across her forearm beneath the first set of data points, this time with a Sharpie scavenged from the depths of her cargo shorts.

Keith committed it to memory.

Shiro’s fist clenched and unclenched. Anguished, soundless tears collected at the corners of his eyes. Braced against the hatch and the opposite side of the opening, Keith reached down and rubbed his shoulder, but before he could ask what it was, Pidge swung around and pounded her fist against the wood paneling, a sonorous baritone suddenly blasting through the speakers.

He could hear a slight distortion in the broadcast. It had to be a broadcast.

“Clear as a-” Pidge started, then abruptly stopped, eyes widening and slack-jawed as she looked at him, her glasses slowly sliding down her nose.

“Bell,” in unison, the three of them whispered the tired idiom.

_ Shit, shit, shit, fuck, shit.  _ That was the clue. It made perfect sense. If the source was where he thought it was, they might have bigger problems on their hands than whatever was going on with that mechanical lion.

Keith dropped through, landing on the counter just as Lance and Hunk entered. “Come on.” He pulled the hatch shut behind him and secured the latch before grabbing Shiro by the wrist and running out the door.

They were surrounded by rock to either side, the sky black and sprinkled with stars above. From this hidden trail where he’d parked them, he couldn’t see the sky. Patting his pocket absently for his phone, Keith forgot he’d passed it over to Hunk for navigation and was probably still in the car.

“What time is it?” He asked of whoever might answer.

“Almost seven-thirty,” Lance replied, easily keeping pace.

“Three-hour shift,” Keith yelled back to Pidge.

“Three-hour drive,” Lance corrected.

Pidge slowed to a jog, inputting the values into her tablet. “Keith?”

“What is it?” he answered.

“I think it’s traveling at a speed of two thousand two hundred-”

“Eighty-eight miles per hour?” he finished. “More or less?”

She nodded slowly.

_ Fuck. _

He stopped.

“What are we doing now?” Lance asked.

“Going up.” Keith pointed to the top of the ridge before them. Letting go of Shiro, he sprinted to the precipice, not waiting to see who followed.

Reaching the apex, he shrugged off his plaid button-down, tugging the neck of his damp t-shirt away from his body, then letting it go again, the chill of night at his back. Casting his eyes downward, he spotted the massive dish of the relay embedded into the side of the rock. Of course. So who was sending this signal and using this point of amplification?

He spun around, tilting his face to the heavens, mind racing, searching for a point of orientation. That’s what he needed to find. He needed to double check his hypothesis.

_ Stupid. _ They didn’t know what they were doing.

_ Stupid. _ They were out of their league.

_ Stupid. _ He cursed under his breath. He couldn’t focus.

“Keith?” Shiro sucked in his breath through his teeth, reeling unsteadily on his feet, hand up to the sky. The circuitry lining and crossing the seams of the prosthetic flashed, purple light sparking and intensifying to his fingertips as if dissolving a levee at his hand. All the stars spilled forth, painting the sky. “North.”

Terrified. Shiro was absolutely terrified. Why? Reaching for him, Keith cinched one arm around his waist, pulling him close while crunching the numbers in his head.

Everything added up. Shiro stood frozen in place, eyes unblinking.

“Pidge?” he called, hoping he’d made a mistake.

“Keith?” She got to her feet, brushing the dirt from the final climb off her knees with one hand, tablet in the other, awkwardly inputting something with her thumb, headset hanging around her neck. Hunk and Lance were close behind. She pushed her glasses up on top of her head. “I think it’s coming from-”

It was all he’d needed to hear, and he stabbed his finger at a point in the sky, where Shiro was already staring. “There.”

Their heads turned following his arm to the silver half-moon.

“They’re coming for me,” Shiro whispered under his breath.

Spinning around, Keith took Shiro’s head in his hands, pulling him down to his level, forehead to forehead. “No! Shiro, no.” He dropped his shirt to take him in an embrace. Burying his face in the crook of Keith’s shoulder, Shiro staggered before finding his balance, shuddering with a sob that wracked his very being.

Pidge placed a hand on Shiro’s back. Lance wrapped his long arms around Shiro and Keith.

“If they come for you, they have to get through us first.” Hunk said, leaning protectively in beside them.

 

+++

 

Shiro filled the mug with water from the tap and stared at it. Hunk had sanitized the reservoir when they’d checked the plumbing back at the campsite several days earlier, but it didn’t keep him from wondering how safe it was or why Keith wasn’t deathly sick from living here. It was clean now at least.

Pidge had fallen asleep at the table, face down in the bed of her arms, lightly snoring with the unexpected cat pressed up against her. Lance had curled up on the fold-out lounge into Hunk’s back for warmth.

Shiro peeked over at her screen, still running calculations. Nothing had changed. In the morning, he had promised himself he’d come clean. Just right now, he couldn’t. Was the message for Sendak or someone else here on Earth? The dispatch had come from one of the fleet ships, and that ship was hiding behind the moon, using it for cover. He hadn’t been able to make out the entire thing, but he’d heard enough. A ship on the other side of the moon, from the people who abducted him, could mean several things. Why was it here, and what was it here to do?

Popping his pills into his mouth, he washed them down with a swig and set the mug on the counter. He made his way back to the bedroom, careful to shut the screen behind him stepping over the pile of shoes and clothes. Keith lay sprawled out in his underwear on top of the comforter, staring at the rotating glow of the constellations projected across the room.

“I always wanted a nice bedroom. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. This,” he swept a hand around, indicating the tiny room, “it just got to be too much, you know?”

He did know. “It’s important to have a comfortable place to sleep.”

Keith lifted his head to look at him, skeptically.

Shiro decided to ignore that. “I had Pidge and Lance pick this out. Hunk and I weigh too much to pretend to mattress shop for you. I can return it if you don’t like it.”

“What? No. This is amazing! I’m not sinking, it supports my back. I might want to stay here all day every day. Soon enough, you’ll be cursing the decision to build me a nest because you might never see me again.” 

“As long as I can come join you, it’ll be fine.”

Splayed like a starfish, Keith stretched his limbs before shifting onto his side, patting the space beside him.

With a sigh, Shiro peeled off his shirt and flung it to one of the nightstands where he’d left his arm and compression liner.

Keith grinned. “You’ve got a lion over your heart.”

He looked down at the constellation slowly making its way across his chest. There was Leo, right where Keith had called it. In two strides, Shiro was on the bed beside him. He placed his hand over Keith’s and drew it to his breast. “Not anymore,” he said simply.

_ I’ve got you. _

With little urging, Shiro let go to comb his fingers through Keith’s thick hair. He put his nails to Keith’s scalp and dragged them through. “Happy birthday fifteen days late.”

The eyes and face that met his weren’t even making a pretense of hiding the expression of genuine adoration. Red cried from the other side of the screen and after a moment squeezed herself under and hopped up onto the bed.

“Thank you, little lady,” Keith addressed her as she walked up his leg to settle at his hip where she tucked her paws in and perched.

Someone, probably Lance, had staged a cat bed on the floor of Keith’s narrow closet. He could see it through the cracked door. She must have stolen away there through the entirety of the sojourn.

Keith hooked his big toe just inside the tube of Shiro’s sock and slowly pushed it down, over his heel and off his foot. “Not sexy.”

Shiro spread his toes and slid his other foot across the comforter just out of Keith’s reach. “What is this complaining now?”

“I’m not complaining, merely stating a fact.” Keith stretched his leg, but without changing position, he couldn’t reach. Shiro thought it was cute. Not that Keith was particularly short. He was at least eight or nine inches taller than Pidge, and she was close to five feet. Keith shifted his head into the crook of Shiro’s shoulder, one arm draped over his chest, abandoning the remaining sock. He twined their legs, pressing his body close. Keith squeezed Shiro’s pec then tweaked his nipple and doodled nothings across his flesh with rough fingertips. No apologies. It made Shiro feel architectural like some an impressive feat of engineering, every part of him individually admired and valuable.

“You have guests,” Shiro stated the fact, but he didn’t think Keith particularly cared.

Keith raised himself up, leaning in and encouraging Shiro to pull him in close. Shiro ran his hands from Keith’s shoulders down the length of his back, and over the slight rise of his butt, squeezing. Pulling his knees up to either side, Keith straddled him and bending his head down, fingers twisted in his hair, kissed him. The raw and unexpectedly voracious appetite startled him, and Keith pulled back suddenly.

“No?” he asked, peering down into Shiro’s face with his dark eyes.

What could he say? So much had happened, he’d hardly had any time to process, to compartmentalize. Fingering Keith’s hair, he sighed. It was so easy to lie to himself and say that everything was just fine, but no one else believed that. It was what it was, no more, no less. On a regular basis, his therapist told him to be honest with himself, to be kind to himself. He didn’t think those things went hand in hand, but he was beginning to see the value in those words. The truth meant that he had to face the things he’d been trying to avoid for whatever reason, insecurity, fear, anxiety, mistrust. The kindness was the bandaid. “They’re out there. Even if they’re hiding behind the biggest satellite in the sky, they’re there.”

Lowering his head slowly in agreement, Keith looked out the windows where the moon was staring them down, it’s silver beam light cascading across the planes of his face. “There’s nothing you can do about it though.”

He knew that, but there was a certain comfort in hearing it from someone else. Woody leered at them, slumped dramatically over from where he’d been stuffed in the curtain tie. Shiro blinked.

“At least not yet,” Keith mused.

Shiro rubbed his palm down the length of Keith’s arm, thumbing along the tendons and sinews from shoulder to wrist. “Sometimes I ask myself if this is a dream.”

Keith crossed his arms over Shiro’s chest and rested his chin on top. “It’s not.”

He smiled, fingers wandering just beneath the elastic band of Keith’s briefs. “How can you be so sure?”

“Philosophically, you can’t. Maybe I’m a part of your dream, or maybe you’re a part of mine.” He shifted in agitation and reached behind himself to move Shiro’s hand down just a little farther.

“I’d like to think that if I were dreaming, my dreams would treat me better.”

“Would  _ you _ treat yourself better?”

_ Ouch. _

Shiro felt the clammy cold against his flesh and the twitch in Keith’s groin. Then head up, and with a feline grace, Keith arched his back and slid off.

Shiro sulked. Why had he changed his mind?

“You’re too distracted,” Keith answered the question as if he’d known it was coming and reached across Shiro to the nightstand for his cigarettes and lighter.

“Can you not?” Shiro sighed.

Hesitant for a second, Keith set his things back down. “Fine. Not in bed. I’m not ready to die yet anyway.”

“Nah. We’re not going to die here.”

“Oh? You sound pretty sure of that.”

“It’s true. I’m going to die alone.”

“Shiro, everybody dies alone.”

“I mean, alone-alone. In space.” Of that, he was certain, or at least certain enough he believed it. He’d had that particular dream so many times he’d lost count.

“Can you not?” Keith repeated Shiro’s phrase right back at him.

“What?” Apparently he was doing everything wrong, but there’s been no malice or frustration in Keith’s tone.

“Be so morbid. I have a bad feeling about this. All of it: this signal, the lion, paladins. We’ll be lucky if we make it out alive.”

_ You really believe that, and you think we might not. _

Keith shrugged, tracing a finger along the lines of Shiro’s abdomen. Without warning, he slammed his face into Shiro’s tight stomach and blew a raspberry.

Shiro burst into laughter. “Way to ruin a serious moment.”

Keith climbed back over him, head down as if coming in for a kiss but licking the tip of his nose instead. Taking Shiro’s hand, he pressed it against his cock. “Come on, let’s get your mind focused on something else, okay? I’ve got this raging boner with your name on it. I might need some help.”

 

+++

 

Pidge picked her head up at the loud crash from the bedroom, followed by a feral hiss and a hard thud. She cringed. Shiro shoved aside the screen and stumbled out, wearing one white sock, flopping half off his foot and his briefs twisted around the previous night’s standing ovation. He didn’t seem to be aware of it, though, any more so than he was of his sleep-tufted hair, the bruises on his neck, or the pink scratches across his chest. Rubbing his eyes, he collected himself, clearly unaware of how ridiculous he looked.

“‘Morning,” he croaked.

“Good morning, hot stuff,” she deadpanned.

“That’s my line!” Keith yelled, indignantly. Momentarily, he emerged from behind Shiro, in marginally better condition, but with pants on - unbuttoned and unzipped but on - hair wild and untamed.

Looking down and scratching his neck, Keith immediately honed in on Shiro’s underwear failure with shameless scrutiny. “You might want to fix yourself before I decide your dick is a microphone and start singing  _ I Only Have Eyes For You _ .” Standing on tiptoe with his lips to Shiro’s ear, he let out a soulful, breathy, “sha bop sha bop, oh oh,” before slipping away, just out of reach.

Pidge would have paid money, good money, to see that, but Shiro promptly rearranged his briefs, which did nothing to help, cheeks flushed pink.

She raised her brows. “Look at these beauty queens.”

“Gorgeous.” Hunk set a plate of leftovers down beside her laptop.

To be fair, she’d already seen her bedhead in the bathroom mirror and knew it rivaled Keith’s. “And shameless,” she added.

Lance rolled over, earplugs in, sleep mask on, and dribble of drool at his cheek. He yawned, curling his fingers and exposed toes, then pulled the blanket over his head.

“See, Shiro?  _ Lance  _ doesn’t sleep with his socks on,” Keith chided.

“My feet were cold.”

“How? You generate heat!” 

Hunk picked at his own food as Keith brushed past Shiro and slid onto the bench beside him, leaning in to see what they’d been working on.

She turned her computer to face him and set her headset down on the table. “I’ve got nothing.”

Keith glanced at the screen then held out his hand.

Hunk passed over the headset, shaking his head. “Unless someone here speaks alien, we’re stuck.” He looked pointedly at Shiro, stirring the contents of his plate with his fork.

Expression unchanging, Keith replayed the audio several times, then started typing, navigating and clicking. She wanted to watch what he was doing, but couldn’t see around Hunk.

Pidge stirred the contents of her plate. She had to admit, Shiro made the best mac and cheese she’d ever tasted. Even chilled, straight from the fridge.

Shiro held out his hand. “Let me listen.”

Taking the headset off, Keith handed it to him. “Here you go.”

Hunk and Keith squeezed up to make room as he slid in, adjusting the headset and settling it over his ears with halting resignation. The message wasn’t very long and repeated itself with only a short pause in between.

They watched him and waited.

“It’s Galra.”

“Galra?” Hunk asked first.

Shiro drew his lips into a cold hard line, staring at his hand and the empty space where his other one was missing. He crossed his arms on top of the table, effectively covering the loss. “That’s their language. It’s also what they call themselves.”

It was the first time Shiro had ever named his captors. At least to her. Judging by their reactions, Hunk and Keith as well.

Silence filled the air.

Keith scraped the dirt from under his nails.

Hunk forked off a bite of beef patty, speared it, and shoveled it into his mouth, chewing slowly. 

Shiro re-focused on the broadcast. Two tiny wrinkles formed between his brows, pursing his lips and screwing up his face in thought. “Something woke up about a ship and there’s a bounty for the soldier. Or,” he paused, leaning in conspiratorially and stealing a kiss from his boyfriend, “it’s a tentacle dick joke.”

Keith groaned, shoving him off. 

Shiro beamed at him, ignoring the unmistakable annoyance. Pidge hadn’t seen him smile like that in ages.

“‘About a ship?’” she asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t translate exactly, and I’m not very good with the language. It’s a modifier acting sort of like a preposition.” He looked at them for confirmation no one could give. “I think? Maybe?”

Someone’s stomach grumbled, and Keith pushed gently against Shiro’s arm. “Let me out. I’m hungry.”

Keith might have said something else as well, but Pidge couldn’t hear it. She nudged Hunk with her elbow. He shook his head, shoulders raised and lowered.

When Shiro refused to get up, Keith slid under the table and crawled out. Instead of getting food though, he stepped outside, door slapping shut behind him as he dug in his pocket. Through the plate glass, she watched. He stopped several yards into the bright, cloudless morning and lit a cigarette.

Smoke break.

That was probably why Shiro hadn’t moved, and she wasn’t touching that.

With a sigh, Pidge pulled the laptop back over and checked to see what Keith had input, maximizing the copied window in the taskbar.

A clip of the audio was sectioned out, tagged with the phrase, “ _ Red Paladin.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been sitting on this chapter for a few days short of a month. It’s been almost a year since I started writing this thing and July since I updated. I guess I haven't deviated from my slow 2-3 month update schedule. Sometimes this story is hard to write. There are parts of it I love, parts I hate, and parts I’m embarrassed to admit I even I wrote. 
> 
> This was originally supposed to be a simple proposition fic where Keith wants to get in Shiro’s pants, and Lance becomes Keith’s life coach. I’m looking at myself as I deeply sigh, asking a single question.
> 
> Why?
> 
> Also, and this is more interesting, when I was trying to figure out what the deal was with the NASA Mobile Quarantine Facilities, I learned that the Apollo 13 Airstream is missing. How convenient! (The National Air and Space Museum has the Apollo 11 trailer. It’s out at Hazy, so if you’re ever out near Washington Dulles International Airport and have some time, I recommend checking it out. They've got a lot of neat stuff out there.)
> 
> Anyway, I might be back on track with my story. That was one hella long detour.


	6. The Alien Agenda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk has a bad night, so does Keith. Things get real.

**Lunar Transient Phenomena (LTP)**

A 1968 NASA technical report detailed known and “credible” LTPs, including:

  *  July 1821 - flashing bright lights observed
  *  February 1877 - stream of light across the Eudoxus Crater lasting approximately one hour
  *  April 24, 1882 - moving shadows observed in the Aristotle area
  *  June 14, 1940 - two streams of light in the Plato Crater, additional lights recorded in this area
  *  May 24, 1955 - phenomena similar to electrical discharge observed at the moon’s south pole
  *  September 13, 1959 - dark mass blocked the Litrow area
  *  June 21, 1964 - dark mass passed across the surface near the Ross D. area for more than two hours
  *  September 11, 1967 - **black cloud surrounded by a violet glow** observed over the Sea of Tranquillity



Middlehurst, B.M., Burley, J.M., Moore, P., and Welther, B.L. 1968. Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events. _NASA Technical Report_ NASA-TR-R-277.

 

+++

 

Hunk never liked being late.

Keith had called a meeting, more precisely, he’d asked, suggesting they meet at Hunk, Lance, and Pidge’s place, where centrally located, they’d have privacy away from listening ears and prying eyes.

The request seemed reasonable, though Hunk wasn’t sure why he’d couched it in such paranoid terms. It did mean that Keith trusted them, at least to an extent, the sentiment sweet and endearing, even more so coming from someone about as feral as a mid 90s thrift shop punk.

They could have convened at the Airstream, but five people in Keith’s camper was capacity, and capacity was cramped. Another option had been Shiro’s apartment, but that remained the external reflection of an expansive internalized vacancy. Nobody liked Shiro’s apartment. Well, he didn’t know how Keith felt about it per se, but he could guess.

The yellow stripes of the highway converged to a point in the distance as he drove, forever out of reach, like everything in his life. He saw Shay less and less. Medical school occupied most of her time, and the impossibility of maintaining a relationship with someone who was never there took its toll, a large and ugly head looming on the horizon like a festering boil ready to burst.

About a year ago, a childhood knee injury had acted up, and he failed his physical. Not his fault, but there’s been nothing he could do either, but take his honorable discharge and the end of his commission in silent disappointment. At least the Air Force wasn’t going to make him pay back the cost of his education, and he had plenty of options. However, instead of opening his own mechanical repair shop, or applying for any qualified engineering job, he’d instead gone into the culinary arts. Talked into it by a mysterious woman with silver hair who walked weightless on stardust, Hunk enjoyed his present occupation, was even good at it, but the hours were terrible, and he wanted the weekends free. It wasn’t a lot to ask, yet here he was presently asking himself why he still hadn’t quit.

He didn’t have an answer.

Two spots of light descended far ahead of him. He should have called to say he wasn’t going to make 18:30 and glanced quickly over at his phone lying face-down in the passenger’s seat. He had just seen Shay for the first time in over a week, the scent of her still ripe upon his flesh, mingled with his own sweat and musk. He’d wanted to stay longer, but had already promised to show up tonight.

The unspoken question haunted him. He’d seen it in her eyes when he’d gotten up to leave. _“Who’s more important? Them or me.”_

But that wasn’t the point. The point was keeping his word and doing what he said he was going to do. The point was being reliable, being a good friend.

Subsequently becoming a disappointing boyfriend. The thought left a bad taste in his mouth.

The lights traveled fast toward him as he approached, and suddenly the road ahead exploded in a fury of asphalt, gravel, dirt, and sand. The Jeep skidded to a stop, drifting sideways as he slammed on the brakes, tires squealing into the spray of debris.

Outside the windshield, a turret slowly rotated. With creaking bearings and a click, the cannon locked into place. A second came from the opposite side, attached to a large craft Hunk couldn’t make out for the earthen cloud that hung in the air. The barrels trained into position. On him.

_Crap._

Deftly, he ground the gearbox into reverse and smashed the accelerator to the floor, spinning off the road into the turn and pulling out again in the direction he’d come. The engine revved hard, coughing up a black cloud in its wake as he pushed past the redline in his flight. For one brief moment, he thought he’d lost it, whatever it was, but the flat, oval-shaped craft emerged from the billowing smog soaring after him at full throttle. Divots of the road churned up behind and before him. One of his tires went out, a second, and he was off the shoulder, the Jeep tumbling to rest upside down, well into the desert.

He struggled with his seatbelt, but the latch had jammed, and he only succeeded in locking it tighter across his chest. A twinge of panic began to move out from the flight center of his cerebral cortex. The strapping held fast as he yanked on it and jostled the latch. Pulling up his legs down, he pushed against the steering column with his feet. Nothing. Letting out an angry roar, he kicked the dash, bouncing in his seat in an attempt to break it and free himself.

No deal.

_Shit._

What he needed was a knife. He didn’t have one.

_Who keeps a knife in their car just because?_

The craft was still there as the dust settled over its non-reflective hull, hovering in his rearview mirror, the lights now blinking red.

He could think his way through this, but he needed a little time. Perspiration trickled along his temples, dripping off his shaggy fringe onto the ceiling. He rattled the seatbelt again, a last-ditch effort to loosen it or wriggle himself out. It wasn’t going to give. Closing his eyes, he took a calming breath and slowly let the air out of his lungs through barely parted lips.

Cover. How could he get cover?

The ground rumbled around him while he clutched the steering, and darkness enveloped the overturned vehicle, blotting out the moon. He would have sworn it was the earth rising in defense, but he didn’t have another thought to put to it.

The light blasted out above him. The shell of the Jeep rocked with a crash. Liquid chugged, spilling from the rear.

Another shock of explosion.

The world went black.

 

+++

 

The floor dropped out, and he hung suspended in the air before gravity kicked back in, only it didn’t. Keith wasn’t holding his breath; he couldn’t breathe, and for his own frame of reference, he was confident the broken soles of his boots remained firmly planted on the ground. He stood where he had just a moment earlier, so what was the source of this nauseating recoil? His fingers clawed and grappled with the front of his shirt, tearing the neckline. He scratched at his neck, eyes squeezed tightly shut, droplets of moisture leaking out the corners and collecting like dew upon his lashes. The static noise began as a tiny cry from the hollows of his mind, an indiscernible babel gradually reaching a deafening thunder. The piercing sound of _something_ cut across the remaining space inside, and he clapped his hands over his ears, gritting his teeth.

Hunk. Something had happened to Hunk.

No, something _was happening_ , right at that very moment.

“Keith?” Pidge’s small voice was tentative, hesitant. He barely noticed her fingers graze his arm.

He became a third party observer. Several miles away, Rocky pillars rose from the quaking earth to encase the overturned Sahara. The scent of petroleum distillates filled his nostrils.

It was gone, just as quickly as it had come on. Blinking, Keith felt something warm dripping from his nose over his lips then down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Blood and snot. He stared at it a moment before smearing it on the leg of his jeans. He didn’t know why, but a deep-seated dread had settled inside him. Each inhaled respiration became a tortured rasp although his windpipe was finally free.

He had to go, and he had to go now.

“Hey,” Shiro tapped his shoulder. “You okay?” He peered at Keith, mouth parted and eyes wide in question.

Keith wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “Hunk’s in trouble.”

Shiro, Lance, and Pidge stared at him.

A shrill, plaintiff cry of wretched despair resounded through his skull with a flash of color brighter than the midday sun. He bent over, holding his head, clamping his jaw as tightly as he could to relieve the sudden pressure.

“We gotta go.” Keith left his helmet on the floor as he turned and stepped back over the threshold, jumping down the flight of steps and vaulting over the handrail. “Now!” he yelled, sprinting down the street as fast as he could toward his bike. Swinging his leg over the back, he turned the engine and booted up the stand, burning rubber as he took off out of the lot.

The scent of fear and the trail of dust through the air led him onward. He accelerated, weaving through traffic leaving a zig-zagging stream of black exhaust as the blur of the world passed him by, and the clamor in his head crescendoed to a metallic sharpness.

He didn’t know how much time he had. All he could see in the vague distance was the massive form of a boulder beside the road, but he knew one had never been there before.

Brush fire and patches of scorched earth drew him in, the crackling of flame in the otherwise still night a warning to any who would approach. From within the radius of his high beams, he glimpsed the glossy sheen of yellow paint, and when he was nearly upon it, he realized a natural armor of fused stone and glass partially encased the Jeep, formed as if by sorcery from the sand and silt.

His bike hit the ground as he jumped off and ran toward the wreckage.

“Hunk!” he yelled, heart caught in his throat, pounding with every footfall.

The urgency of the voices was fraught with impatience, and pretending to ignore it was all Keith could do to maintain the ever-tenuous grasp on his sanity. Feeling his way around the rocky encasement, he found passage through the back window and crawled inside, the overpowering stench of gasoline thick in the air and the wetness of it slick against his hands.

“Hunk?” he called again. Looking up, Keith could see him, a large and dark form, suspended upside down against the crisp illumination that managed to leak through the earthen fingers surrounding the vehicle. Coughing, Keith tried again, squeezing himself beneath the backrest of the seats as he struggled to make his way to the front of the cab.

Hunk did not respond.

“Hey.” Keith shook his shoulder, gently at first, then harder. A wave of heat permeated the air bringing a cloud of smoke along with it. Something was damaged inside the engine; it choked and sputtered.

He fumbled with Hunk’s seat belt and tugged on the catch. It didn’t budge. In the dim light, he could tell it was crushed and jammed in place, the straps pulled tightly across Hunk’s chest and lap. He needed a knife, scissors, something sharp.

A resounding boom rocked the SUV, settling it deeper into the sand. Quickly, Keith snapped open the latch on the glove compartment to a tumble of odds and ends. He sifted through the contents, Tire gauge, owner’s manual, title, registration, napkins, tissue packs, a bandanna, and a ziplock baggie of what appeared to be fresh underwear.

Gripping the strap between his hands, Keith wondered if he could rip it and attempted to start a tear with his teeth as he bit down on the nylon and twisted to pull against himself. He couldn’t do it. Releasing the belt, Keith inhaled, the air so thick he could have cut it if he’d had anything to cut with. The dense smoke of burning fuel charred his lungs, and he swallowed a cough, blinking through the discomfort. Something caught his eye, a faint violet-blue light from the underside of the passenger seat. Without a second thought, he reached for it, fingers finding purchase around a handle perfectly sized to his grip. When he pulled it out, Keith saw that the light emanated from a sigil, a stylized five embedded into the crossguard of a dagger.

He could look at it later.

In a single swift movement, Keith slashed the belt, supporting Hunk as he fell. He crammed the knife between his belt and the waistband of his jeans in case he needed it again. The shattered passenger side window opened to the outside, though partially covered by the rocky enclosure. Keith backed up to it, dragging Hunk with him and kicking at a fissure, knocking free enough of the gravel and fused stone shell to allow their passage out.

Adrenaline pumping and anxious to get away, Keith only paused to heave Hunk half over his back and shoulder, before carrying him away one step at a time.

The vehicle erupted in their wake, a blazing inferno bursting out from the surrounding casement, spreading across the ground like a bubbling brew, engulfing everything in its path. The forced blast of air knocking Keith off his feet and Hunk along with him. Struggling to stand, Keith fell back over his charge to a protective crouch. “NO!” he bellowed, palms flat against the ground. Clouds of soot and flame parted before him, arching above to following the path of an invisible shield that fell like shards of crystal rain at their feet as it passed.

The powder blue Civic squealed to a stop before them, and Keith watched Shiro, Pidge, and Lance exit, rushing toward them just before something ripped into his flesh, severing muscle, and carving through bone as it struck him from behind. He careened forward, a fin of shrapnel embedded deep in his shoulder.

 

+++

 

White light filled the breadth of Keith’s vision when he opened his eyes, the throbbing ache of pressure in his frontal lobes intensifying with the sting of overstimulation. Ceiling tiles came into focus. The smattering of brown stains made the room feel dingy, and he wondered if rodents roosted in the dropped ceiling and used those spots as communal latrines.

It was probably just a leak in the roof.

The unfamiliar ceiling continued to stare him down. Where was he? Why were the only identifiable smells the scents of iodine and sterile gauze? Why did the air feel stiff and heavy?

Closing his eyes again, he sank lower into the pillow as he tried to clear his head.

_Blue hands, bright lights, the turbulent voices occupying his thoughts with their synesthetic miasma of sound and color._

_Hunk._

He shot upright, eyes wide in panic. “Where’s Hunk?”

“Hey now!” Lance pushed him back down, both hands against his chest. “Hunk’s two floors down. Shiro’s with him.”

Keith struggled against him, feeling an aggravated ache in his right shoulder when he tried again to rise.

“Stop it. You were in surgery for over half the day, just stay put, okay.”

Nothing about this present situation was okay. Keith had to know his friend was all right, but Hunk was Lance’s friend too. He shut his eyes. “No, I need to see him.” He decided to hold out, willing away the tension in his muscles to wait for a second opportunity.

“Not now, but he’ll be fine.” The words gushed forth through clenched teeth, a storm of anger, fear, and concern coalescing behind Lance’s glassy eyes. “He has to be.”

Keith changed his mind and shoved him off, pushing away with what little strength he could muster. He ripped the IV from the back of his hand and detached the monitors. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he slid down until his toes touched the cold linoleum. Staggering with his first step, he gripped the railing beside him, cringing against the sharpness that shot through his arm as he collapsed against it.

_Fuck._

Knees and palms smacked the floor, and he struggled to stand, stepping on the hem of his hospital gown and crashing back down again.

So no one could see him flinch or the heavy tears collected at the dam of his lidded eyes, about to burst from hopeless futility and overwhelming weakness, he pressed his face to the mattress. “Please tell me.” He hardly recognized the sound of his own voice, the words stuck fast in his throat, muffled by the bedding.

This was why he avoided being close to people. One way or another, they always left.

Sometimes they got to see him like this beforehand.

A firm grip dug into his ribs. “Come on. Get up. Hunk’s on oxygen.” Lance swallowed hard, trembling.

Turning around, Keith wiped his face on his sleeve, refusing to accept the help. “What’s that mean? Is he conscious? Is he okay? Is h-”

The nurse burst through the door, and he abruptly closed his mouth.

Instead of answering Keith, Lance spoke to the nurse, “He got up before I could stop him.”

Lance was in uniform. It had taken a forced pause for Keith to even notice. “What’s going on?” he whispered. The question was instinctual, but the look on Lance’s face told him he’d do better to keep quiet.

“Come on.” The nurse reached for Keith’s arm, but he snatched it away.

“I can do it myself. I was just a little disoriented, that’s all.” Awkwardly, he climbed back up onto the bed and allowed the nurse to reattach the IV drip and the monitors. He’d been in and out of a lucid state since he awoke in the ambulance and again during surgery when the medical team was reassembling his collarbone. Fortunately,  he didn’t have to see that, but he had felt it, a dull persistence and his entire right arm had lain there pins and needles at his side. At present, the nerve endings burned and the tracks of the stitches from his pectoral all the way up and over to his shoulder blade itched. At least it meant he was healing. He complied and nodded until the nurse was satisfied enough to leave again.

Why was Lance allowed to stay?

“Are you going to tell me?”

“How did you know Hunk was out there?” Lance countered.

“Haven’t you ever heard of premonition? I just did.” Keith wasn’t ready to explain it. Lance would probably just make fun of him anyway.

“Look, all I know is that while you were on the operating table, something happened and the Air Force showed up,” he paused, “I think. Why the Air Force?”

“If I have a soul, they own it, not to mention my medical records. I have one living relation, and he was declared incompetent some twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago.” Keith hoped that was enough, and Lance would press no further.

“Keith, why would they care so much? You’re a contractor, that’s all.”

He slowly turned his head toward Lance, eyes locked. He could fly _every_ aircraft on that base, and that made him useful if nothing else.

Lance looked away first. “The General Chief of Staff was the one who came. She was here asking after you, okay?”

Keith knew; he remembered speaking with her. General Montgomery had wanted to know what he’d been doing at the “site.” What Hunk had been doing there? The police had done their work, and the Central Intelligence Agency was sending a crew out that afternoon. An official statement would not be released. It was probably just a weather balloon.

_My ass._

That didn’t explain the earth shield or the heavy artillery fire throughout the wreckage. _A weather balloon._ The thought of Mr. Henry “Hunk” Garrett entangled with a weather balloon was almost too much.

He fought the sudden urge to laugh.

Lance glared at him for several long seconds, then deflated, slumping back into the chair beside the bed. “Anyway, I’m supposed to make sure no one unauthorized comes into this room until they can get someone else out here, but something must be going on right now because they seem to have forgotten.”

Keith nodded, remembering that Lance and Pidge were still technically on inactive reserves. He’d looked that up out of curiosity when he’d started taking shifts at the restaurant. Why this, though? What exactly _had_ happened to Hunk out on the road? He looked down at his hands. They’d come through the fire unscathed. The last blast was seared into his memory, rushing toward them, chasing the wind.

Someone knocked on the door then opened it slowly in on creaking hinges. Shiro stepped into the room, hair disheveled and shirttails hanging out. “You’re awake!” he beamed and rushed to the bed.

 

+++

 

Shiro fished in his pocket until he found Lance’s house key and let himself inside, hanging it beside the door after locking it again. Tentatively, he peered around the corner surveying the travesty before him, freezing almost immediately. The cacophonic twangs he’d heard from the porch echoed loudly from the living room. As far as he could tell, he had stepped through one of two things, either the bending portal of an alternate dimension or the gates of Purgatory.

It wasn’t Hell. Hell was the salient reality of several days prior and an ambulance carting away the unconscious bodies of a beloved friend and his boyfriend.

_Boyfriend._

Shiro despised that word, casually flippant in spoken tone, but he couldn’t divine one better. “Lover” focused too finely on the sexual aspect. “Significant other” came close, but it required a certain longevity. Did it count that he felt like he’d known Keith for years?

Shiro could even see himself in a hypothetical future with Keith. Far from perfect, coexistence was ever fraught with compromise, but he wasn’t looking for perfection. He was looking for home.

The scene he’d regretfully walked in on was a far cry from anything resembling comfort and stability.

Shiro had left Keith in Lance and Pidge’s care that morning, while he stayed with Hunk until Shay arrived. She was there now. It had only been seven hours, but within that relatively short span of time, the trio had somehow managed to form a ukulele band of marginal talent, zero accomplishment, and absolutely no inhibition. Keith, in someone else’s over-laundered tank and joggers, bandages stained from a weeping wound, was sporting a costume replica of the horrific rabbit mask from Donnie Darko. It ogled him with its mouth full of oversized teeth, a Cheshire grin arcing across its grotesque visage, its eyes cloudy and lifeless. Furiously, his fingers forced the tune of Misirlou from a tired, tonally defunct ukulele with the pawn shop hang tag still threaded around the neck. Pidge, hair gelled back in a rockabilly pompadour, stood on a milk crate in a full tuxedo that didn’t quite fit and hung off her petite frame in draping folds. She slapped time on the body of an instrument that might have been more abused than Keith’s, screaming out vocals arrhythmically as the feeling hit. Decked out in board shorts, heather gray no-show sports socks, and a faux flower lei with knock-off Ray-Bans, Lance stood tall and proud, occasionally strumming a tuneless chord.

Shiro had clearly walked in on the finest surf rock in the desert.

_Bury me under every granule of sand._

He wanted this to not be his problem, but it was by default.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he checked the time. No one would notice if he took his meds early and went to sleep on the sofa, would they?

“Oh hey, Shiro!” Pidge raised her hand to wave, losing her balance and tumbling off her make-shift pedestal.

Keith sprang out of the way as Pidge crumpled to the floor with a thud, although with that mask on, Shiro would have been hard-pressed to say how he’d even noticed. He flubbed his landing, slipped, and skidded across the hardwood on his knees, slamming into the wall.

Two cats skittered out from behind the television and raced away down the hall, pounding up the stairs to the bedrooms.

Lance ran his nails across the strings in a flat resolve, pivoted around, and moonwalked across the hardwood in his stocking feet before striking a final pose.

What did they think they were doing? Keith had just had surgery on that shoulder; he was supposed to be resting. Fresh spots of blood already soaked through the bandages.

Lance helped Pidge to her feet.

Keith remained where he was, rolling his head Shiro’s direction. “Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?” he slurred.

Staring grimly down, Shiro let him struggle to remove the mask.

Keith finally managed the task and stared right back at him. “See? I’ve got mine on too.” His stomach gurgled, and he ran his tongue over his teeth, one of his extra canines visible in a way they never were when sober. Two more each on the top and bottom and Shiro was positive Keith had all his standard teeth, making the total thirty-six. He’d had always found Keith’s lopsided smile attractive and had never asked about it, but he’d noticed those extra teeth the first time they’d kissed.

Lots of people had extra teeth. Most just didn’t end up keeping them.

“Lance said that Frank was my celebrity look-alike, so we had to get the mask.”

_Frank? Oh right, the rabbit._

Keith held the latex monstrosity above his face by an ear, letting it sway pendulously. “I don’t look like a bunny.”

“Yes, you do,” Pidge snorted, shuffling her way over to the sofa and plopping herself down in a sprawl. “Just put that thing back on.” She waved her hand at the mask.

Sitting up, Keith raked his hair back out of his face. Someone had flat-ironed it, someone not Keith, who still lived in the dark ages of shaving cream and straight razors. Every strand fell into place, curling out slightly at his shoulders.

“Your hair looks good,” Shiro blandly stated. It was all he could say. Nothing killed Keith’s mood more than a poorly placed, “you’re gorgeous,” “fuck, you’re beautiful,” or even an accidental, “babe.” To Shiro, though, Keith was those things, hair gleaming like polished onyx, skin slick, and cheeks flushed pink with so much life. Under different circumstances, he might have suggested stealing away together for several hours of mutual and consensual ravaging.

Keith watched, eyes trained blankly. The question had gotten away from him, and Shiro wondered what now churned through that ever-wandering mind.

“I fixed it before he cut his bangs himself,” Lance offered.

“I always cut my bangs myself. How else am I supposed to see?” Keith’s gaze snapped to Lance, growling indignantly at the admonishment.

“Yeah, well, that’s why it looks like a terrible mullet.”

Keith opened his mouth, but Shiro beat him to the conversational void. “you have a real talent for hair, but Lance,” he sighed, “I asked you to do one thing.”

“I did exactly what you said. I gave him his medicine and asked him what he needed.”

Lance threw the admonishment right back at him with sass.

_Breathe. Focus._

_Patience._

Shiro tried again. “You weren’t supposed to give it to him until tonight.”

“You didn’t say that.”

Absently, he rubbed Keith’s arm.

Keith looked up at him, unfocused, breathy, effectively stoned. “It’s all good. I can’t feel a thing.”

As if proof were required, Keith reached over to grab a dagger off the side table. Shiro recognized it as the one Lance had picked up from the crash site. He was sure he’d seen it in Keith’s belt before the explosion knocked him down. Staring at the blade with what seemed more like wary calculation than anything else, Keith hefted it deftly in his grip and pressed the tip against his forearm.

Without missing a beat, Shiro was on him, but before he could wrest the knife from the vise-like grip, Keith had managed to slice a sizeable way into his arm with its razor edge. “No! What the hell are you doing?”

He decided right then that he never, ever wanted to find himself on the wrong side of a match against Keith. Even in this state, he was quick and precise. Worst of all, he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

“Lance!” Shiro demanded, squeezing to stop the flow of blood.

“It doesn’t hurt.” Keith murmured, letting the knife fall to the ground, already looking over his shoulder at the ukulele abandoned on the floor after his crash and burn.

Lance rushed away, returning momentarily with bandages and a towel he pressed against the fresh wound.

Keith tried to tug his arm away. “Hey. Let me go.”

“You’re bleeding. Just sit still a moment.” Lance tried to hold him down and apply pressure but wasn’t having much luck.

“No, I’m not. I’m-” Keith looked down at his arm and the blood smeared on the towel. “Oh, I guess I am.”

Shiro shooed Lance away and pressed the towel to the wound. “Just keep still, okay.” He placed Keith’s hand over it, pressing down. “Hold that,” he directed, but Keith only let the towel fall, watching the garnet, jewel-like liquid ooze out of the fissure, echoing the slow rhythm of his heart.

“It’s so pretty.”

“Yes, you are.” Shiro ran his hand through Keith’s hair, rubbed his thumb over one heavy brow, continuing down his face before sitting down behind him. Arms wrapped around Keith’s waist and face pressed against the back of his head, Shiro held him still while Lance worked fast to patch him up.

Abandoning the first aid kit, Lance scrounged up a tube of superglue to close the wound, wiping the laceration clean with antiseptic before quickly gluing it shut and taping it. “Everything was fine until you showed up. I didn’t realize when you said to make sure he took the medication, that he’d already been dosed,” the look he gave Shiro at once caustic and unapologetic.

The animosity struck him as incredibly unfair.

“Do you really think the hospital releases their patients into the wild-”

“This isn’t the wild,” Pidge interjected, “this is the burbs.”

“-without some sort of pain control? This is at least enough for someone three times his size. The anesthesiologist couldn’t even get him completely under for surgery because he didn’t want to risk an overdose. The amount of paperwork Keith had to sign while barely conscious was unbelievable.”

“Stop talking about me and talk _to_ me,” Keith demanded of anyone who would listen.

“Or,” Pidge added, placing her palm on the top of Keith’s head, “at least pretend to.”

Keith nodded in agreement.

Sighing, Shiro squeezed him and brushed his hair aside. He pulled Keith back into the comfort of his breast. “You need to rest.”

Keith tilted his head up, worry suddenly present in his fathomless eyes. “Shiro?” he asked, “is Hunk going to be okay? Nobody let me see him. What did I do wrong?”

The open vulnerability sank Shiro’s heart right into his gut. “You did everything right, and Hunk will be fine.” He said it with conviction, squeezing tight, and nuzzling into Keith’s neck, kissing his nape. “Shay’s with him now. That’s why I came back to check on you.”

 

+++

 

Keith clipped the stitch with the scalloped nail scissors and tugged until it pulled free. He dropped the offending piece onto the table then continued onto the next stitch and the one after that.

“What are you doing?” Pidge asked, pushing aside his wallet, cigarettes, and the growing pile of tiny threads to make room for the mug of steaming black coffee.

Pinching the red, inflamed skin where he’d just pulled out a suture, a plug of thick white pus and blood extruded out from one of the holes. “I’m having a reaction to whatever they sewed me up with.”

“Weird.”

“Right? So, out they come.”

“Aside from that, it looks like it’s healing.” Pidge sat down on the mattress of the pull out sofa beside him. Shiro had buried his face in Keith’s lap, arms tangled in the sheets around him, effectively pinning him in place. She reached out to stroke Shiro’s hair, raising her eyes to Keith’s. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. It just itches and, well,” he popped out another dollop of pus.

Leaning forward, Pidge scraped it off with her nail, bringing the discharge up to her nose and sniffing indelicately. She frowned and wiped it off on her oversized kaiju nightshirt.

“Can you get the ones on my back?” Keith couldn’t reach the rest, at least not in the middle of Pidge’s living room without a mirror.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks.” He twisted to grab the dagger he’d lifted from Hunk’s Jeep out from under his pillow before she climbed up, setting it beside his coffee. He’d spent half the night staring at it, and when he’d finally decided to sleep, his bed partner refused to let him go.

Pidge cocked a brow. “Don’t tell me you slept with that thing.”

“Don’t talk about Shiro like that,” he shot back, deadpan.

A grumble came burbling up from below. Keith rubbed Shiro’s back before pulling the covers up over his massive shoulders.

Huffing through her smirk and shaking her head, Pidge immediately climbed up and set herself to task, taking the scissors and gathering Keith’s hair over his opposite shoulder.

“That sure is an odd knife,” she remarked.

“Tell me about it.”

“Phosphorescent?”

Keith didn’t know. The glow was strange. At first, he’d thought it was a toy or prop of some sort, but had been unable to locate a power source. It was well-balanced, sharp, and of sturdy construction.

One of the cats hopped up to the foot of the bed. Keith stretched one leg out, kneading his toes into Goldie’s heavy coat and rubbing her side.

“Cat whisperer,” Pidge chided, a note of envy in her tone.

“Animals are easy to understand,” he retorted. This one just missed her papa.

Pidge opened her mouth as if she were about to say something then closed it again and returned to her task. “Where did you find it?” she finally asked.

“The knife? It’s Hunk’s. It was in his Jeep.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in that Jeep, and I’ve never seen it before. Pretty sure I’d remember a dagger with a glowing… is that a five? It doesn’t look like anything Hunk would have.”

“Could it be Shay’s?”

“Ha.” The biting sarcasm in her tone wasn’t lost on Keith. He was surprised though, if anyone were jealous of the girlfriend, he’d have guessed it to have been Lance. “Should I even ask?”

“Eh.” She tugged out a thread and passed it over to Keith’s open palm.

Pidge continued, waiting for him to deposit the clippings onto the table and sit up again. “If you ask me, she’ll be serving him his spurn notice sooner rather than later.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Hunk doesn’t prioritize people. Everyone is equally special and important to him, and I think sometimes she’d like to be number one. Like when you said you wanted to talk to all of us, he’d made that commitment first, so he ranked you as more important than her.”

Keith turned around; the points of the scissors scraped across his shoulder blade. “But all he had to do was say something came up, and we’d have gotten together another time. All this wouldn’t have happened. I don’t get it.”

Pidge physically turned him back around and pushed his head down to continue her work. “That’s Hunk for you.” She added another thread to the growing handful. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“Huh?”

“You wanted to talk to us, all of us, about something. Must’ve been bothering you,” she mused.

“What do you think?” Undoubtedly it was evident by now. They didn’t have to do this dance.

Pressing her lips to his ear, she whispered, just under her breath, “The Red Paladin.”

He twisted around again, side-eyeing her, the corners of his lips turned slightly up. “There’s also a blue one and a green one.” He had wondered when she would finally ask him.

“How do you know any of this?”

“The little voices inside my head tell me.” Keith relished in truth that sounded so ridiculous it came across as a bad joke. It wouldn’t matter for much longer. Destiny careened toward them on its exponentially accelerating course with mounting tension. The inevitable truth would change their lives for better or for worse.

It had already begun.

“You’re impossible.” Pidge laughed, forehead against his back in unbound exasperation.

 

+++

 

Shiro wanted to take it away, it being the weird dagger Keith had become absurdly attached to. He’d said he was going to leave it at the house but instead had taken it with him when they’d finally gone. Presently, it lay on the bench between them as Keith drove to the restaurant. Their time off was at an end.

Keith had insisted on driving, and since he was the owner of the vehicle, Shiro could only make so many arguments against it. His shoulder was healing fast, almost too fast since he’d removed the stitches and drained the wound. At day five, it was mildly scabbed over and the cut on his arm a thin, pink line. Lance’s superglue fix had been the right idea.

Shiro had overheard one of the surgeons question whether Keith would ever use that arm again judging by the damage. Several hours later, he’d returned to Keith’s room to find him favoring it. Everything worked, albeit with discomfort, and Keith expressed no concern.

He recalled their ruined dinner date when Sendak’s punch grazed Keith’s scalp and split it open above his ear. When he’d looked at it, it was just a scrape, though there’d been a lot of blood. Head wounds bleed, everyone knows that. He hadn’t noticed it again.

People don’t heal that fast. Surely Keith was well aware of that fact, at least on the surface, none of it bothered him in the slightest. Shiro marveled at the fact that everything just kind of ran off his back, like beads of mercury from a broken thermometer. Although to be fair, it might have something to do with the relatively high surface tension, and Keith managed stress well. Mostly.

Better than he did, at least.

They’d gone to the McDonald’s drive-thru, and Keith had purchased no fewer than three Quarter Pounders for himself. He had somehow managed to devour all of them before they pulled into the lot behind the restaurant and was hawkishly eyeing Shiro’s partially eaten meal as if it were prey.

“There’s no way you’re still hungry.”

Shiro knew the conversation was pointless. Keith had been hungry like that since he’d been released from the hospital.

Keith chewed his lip and shifted his eyes away. “I’ll get something else later.”

Exasperated, Shiro thrust his remaining half burger into Keith’s hands. “Take it.”

He fumbled and nearly lost the sandwich to the floorboards. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Shiro lied. “I’m done.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, Keith tried to hand it back with a slight shake of his head. “You aren’t done. I don’t want it.”

“Okay, fine, I’m not done, but I’d rather you eat it.” _Please?_

A hungry Keith was impatient and unfocused with abdominal rumblings loud enough to wake the dead. He also smoked too much. Not that half a Big Mac would help. Shiro kicked open the door and hopped out of the truck.

He let Keith go on ahead, satisfied as he watched the reunion with Hunk. A gentle shoulder tap and the warmest embrace, both of them washed out with pure relief. Keith was the only one who hadn’t seen him since the accident. “Accident” and “incident,” those terms undermined the gravity of what had happened. They should call it what it was, an attack on Hunk’s life.

What Hunk had described wasn’t a military craft either, at least not one he was familiar with. Maybe Keith would know. So much had been going on, they were finally all in one place again. He hadn’t wanted to ask and add more to the weight he knew was already there.

He went on inside to get to work. Stepping into the freezer for his inspection, Shiro went through his inventory lists, moving quickly up and down the racks. They’d have to put in their orders today if Allura wanted the place up and running again before the end of the week. A sudden dizziness washed over him, and he knelt before he lost his balance, gripping the edge of the shelf.

“Shiro?” Lance asked, hovering at the threshold and peering inside. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

As the words left his mouth, he thought he heard his name. Not from the room, but close by nonetheless.

_“Takashi.”_

No one called him that except his mother, and only the mother who birthed him.

This voice did not belong to her. It was one Shiro sometimes heard in his dreams, somewhere in space, usually when he was looking for someone, someone who had made him a promise. _“As many times as it takes_ . _”_ Whenever he found himself alone in that cold place, he only wanted to return to whomever it was. Neither warm nor cold, the voice became his only comfort, and as he had come to understand, single-handedly responsible for sending his dream self to wherever it was he’d gone.

He disliked that dream, thinking it most likely his brain’s way of recognizing and telling him what he already knew about himself and didn’t want to face. He’d grown complacent and comfortable and the idea that his abductors might now be threatening to tear apart his world was one he pushed to the back of his mind and refused to acknowledge.

“Shiro?” Pidge had noticed him too, standing beside Lance with an armful of tablecloths freshly delivered from the linen service.

“Sorry.” He rose to his feet and brushed off his knees. Maybe these feelings were part of his sickness, the dark thing inside that made him doubt himself. He could pretend all day, but at the end of it, somewhere in the dead of night, he always awoke with a singular thought at the forefront of his mind.

_Nobody needs me._

Not even Keith, usually curled up with his head in the crook of Shiro’s shoulder, softly snoring. Then again, Keith needed no one. It didn’t mean he was dismissive, it was more like he’d survive without if life threw that lot at him.

Shiro stepped out of the freezer and locked it shut behind him, looking at his half-finished inventory. He’d have to complete it later.

“You’ve really never seen it before?” Keith asked Hunk, who turned the dagger over in his hand.

“Nope. The grip’s really small.” He handed it back.

Keith curled his fingers around the handle, examining how perfectly his hand fit. “It couldn’t be Shay’s?”

Pidge let out a snort, and Lance jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow.

“What?” She sidestepped away, rubbing her side.

Keith glanced at Pidge, confused. “I don’t know. I’ve never met her.”

Hunk considered this with a soft sigh. “She is the gentlest, most kind-”

“We get it, dude.” Lance interrupted. “Geez, you’re nearly as bad as Shiro-“

Hunk cut him off, “No one’s as bad as Shiro.”

Shiro caught his name, trying to catch up with their conversation. There wasn’t anything wrong with being completely taken with the mere presence of another human being, was there?

“I could have dropped you off at her place, you know.” Lance shifted his weight from one foot to the other, rocking on his toes, one hand on his hip.

“Yeah, but she won’t be back until later, and I really wanted to see everybody.” Hunk coughed, a deep wracking noise that rattled in his lungs.

Keith pulled over a chair. Hunk took it, and slumped forward, resting his chin on the heels of his palms propped upon his knees, his lack of energy unsurprising. “Thanks.”

“Well, now, looks like we’re all finally here.” Pidge looked around at each of them, hoisting herself up to sit on the countertop.

Keith chewed the inside of his cheek, staring pointedly at Shiro.

_“Takashi.”_

There it was again. He wished it would stop calling him that.

_“Shiro.”_

Where was it coming from? He stared at the floor and tried to collect his straying thoughts.

“Okay Keith, you tagged part of the audio feed we got ‘red paladin.’ What the hell’s a ‘red paladin?’” Pidge dropped it as if she hadn’t asked before, folding her hands in her lap. Her feet swung free, first one then the other, heels knocking against the cabinet doors below.

“You mean who.” Keith returned.

Shiro tried to pay attention. For whatever reason, Keith did not want to discuss this topic, despite knowing the conversation needed to be had.

“Okay. _Who_ is the red paladin.”

“I don’t know. But-”

_“Shiro!”_

“Do you hear that?” Shiro interrupted, unable to stop himself from asking. The voice was louder this time, and he couldn’t deny that he’d heard it or convince himself he’d imagined it any longer.

Pidge, Hunk, and Lance looked at him, perplexed, but Keith did not. He’d heard it, too. Slowly, he glanced downward and pointed discreetly to the floor before folding his arms tightly across his chest.

“I-I’m,” Shiro stuttered then collected himself. “I’m going to check the cellar.” Keith’s caution was baffling, though Shiro supposed if he heard things like this all the time, and he apparently did, he wouldn’t want the world to know. People would think he was crazy. Shiro might have thought that too, only he’d also seen a gigantic mechanical lioness hiding in a cavern beneath the desert. “Crazy” suddenly seemed extremely subjective.

That thought gave him pause.

Keith quietly followed him out, the other three tagging along behind.

The silence was deafening; someone needed to say something. “It’s probably just rats,” he tried. Without thinking, he fried the keypad with a current of purple electricity from his cybernetic hand and swung the doors wide to reveal the clean, cool metal staircase leading steeply downward. Crisp, blue light illuminated the footpath, the railing, and ceiling above their heads.

“I’d really like someone to tell me who the hell built a cellar in this place.” Pidge wondered aloud, peering through the ingress. “Imagine the expense! It’s all rock and sand out here.”

It was a good question, a valid question. She’d outsmarted herself. Again.

Shiro began the descent, the spell of his name leading him onward.

Behind him, he heard Lance, “You coming?”

“Yeah.” Hunk’s reply came fraught with hesitation and shortness of breath, but his feet found purchase on the steps.

One, two, three, and four. All of them followed. He knew how each of them walked and the sounds of their steps. He’d memorized the way the air moved around them as they passed through the world and could discern their individual scents. He’d picked the skill up somewhere,  perhaps at a time when self-preservation had been his only goal, but here and now, it transformed into a comfort. He knew he wasn’t alone.

Keith skipped steps two at a time to catch up, slipping his right hand into Shiro’s unsuspecting grasp.

He smiled to himself as Keith pretended, poorly, not to notice, maintaining his stoic facade while stealing glances as they felt their way along the smooth metal sheeting lining their path. Rapping on it with a knuckle, Keith paused, leaning in, listening for the reverberation. There was no ring, only a hard thud from the thick and heavy walls. A glint of blue light reflected in his eyes, “What is this place?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro replied, squeezing Keith’s hand and lacing their fingers tight. “but we’re going to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took this chapter title from Jim Marrs’ book of the same. It’s a fun ride.


	7. Laws of Thermodynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro needs to make friends with a particular lion.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system always increases.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

**entropy**

noun | en·tro·py | /ˈentrəpē/

plural: entropies; symbol: S

  1. (physics) a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
  2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. “a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme”
  3. (in information theory) a logarithmic measure of the rate of transfer of information in a particular message or language.



Origin: Mid 19th century: from en- ‘inside’ + Greek tropē ‘transformation.’

While the quantity of energy in a system remains constant, the quality of that energy always moves toward a state of disorder or entropy. That entropy continues to increase indefinitely until the system reaches thermal equilibrium.

Interestingly, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a physical law that is asymmetric to the direction of time. Basically, this means the change in energy moving forward through time is not equivalent to the change in energy going back in time.

The harsh reality of our present existence is that we experience time linearly and only ever move forward.

At least for now.

 

+++

 

Shiro matched each step to Keith’s gait, arm around his back and index finger hooked through a belt loop. He rubbed his thumb against the warm, smooth flesh beneath the thin, over-laundered t-shirt.

“I wonder how far down we are,” Keith mused, pulling ahead to catch up with Pidge.

Disappointed, Shiro’s arm fell to his side.

Head down over her tablet and shoulders curled forward she turned abruptly around, continuing precariously backward down the stairs. “Uhm, I’m still able to get a pretty strong GPS reading, and given the angle, distance, elevation…” she trailed off, losing herself in thought. She licked the ball of her thumb and held it up toward the source of light from where they had entered, reflecting off the staircase as they traveled downward. Lip curled and squinting through her lenses, she judged the angle. “We’re still probably about 1600 feet above sea level.”

Hunk released a loud puff of air from between his lips. “Stop making things up, Pidge. Admit it, you have no idea how far down we are.”

“You got me,” she shrugged in acquiescence.

“Even so, where did we start?” Lance asked.

“Well, Vegas is the closest city, and it’s at around 2000 feet above sea level,” Keith answered, not missing a beat.

Lance tried to check it on his phone but put it away with a sigh. No reception. “How do you know that?”

“I fly.” Keith tilted his head back, shining the beam of light from his phone at the ceiling. “Do you think this is a bunker? I wonder how long it’s been here? I can’t imagine this is a military installation. Or if it is, it’s well above my clearance.”

“But isn’t your clearance Super Tip Top Secret?” Lance drew his fingers in aimless meanderings along the wall as they continued downward.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit presumptive?” Keith replied. “Besides, I was making a joke.”

“You need to work on your delivery. All I know is that when you and Hunk were in the hospital, _you_ had some high-level hotshots come looking after you. You must be good for something.”

“Rude.” Keith sounded annoyed, but the punch he landed on Lance’s arm was nothing less than friendly.

Chin up, Lance side-eyed Shiro with a questioning brow, but he didn’t know any more than the rest of them.

Regardless, a point had been made. The topic may or may not have been taboo, but Shiro knew better and avoided it.

He looked down at his right hand, currents of energy still coursing through the circuitry. He curled the fingers into a fist, feeling it pulsate through the tortured nerve endings of his stump. Sometimes when he wasn’t wearing it, he forgot his hand was gone. How often had this error gone noticed? Keith could be deceptively transparent, sometimes making it hard to determine what he deliberately chose to ignore. Often had Shiro reached for him with his phantom hand, tried to touch him only to realize there was nothing _there_. His chest began to clamp. Perspiration dotted his shirt like the spray from a summer rain. He reached into his pocket for his pillbox. While it never fixed anything completely, the drugs made his emotions more manageable.

He swallowed the medication dry.

_“Shiro.”_

There was the voice again. Much louder now, and commanding. This time Keith stiffened, frozen in his tracks. “Hold.” He held one hand up for everyone to stop, the other grasping at the air, outstretched behind himself.

Shiro took it and squeezed.

The blue light abruptly stopped at the end of the descent, and the path continued through a level hallway. At elbow height, incised lines of imagery in intaglio relief decorated the walls and the floor before them. Shiro’s foot connected with the paneled metal floor as he marched forward, like the remnant of a dream. Something tugged and pulled at the frayed threads shrouding his mind, but he couldn’t push through or tear it down. Violet light shot out before him, a map across the path leading them on. Curious, he touched the wall, white sparkles of dust filtered through the air as the pictures came to life, the light glowing and pulsing from within, just like the petroglyphs in the Blue Lion’s cavern.

Lance sucked in his breath, surveying the pictures in gaping wonder before stumbling graceless back into the opposite wall where the light suddenly came to life around him. He gasped and jumped abruptly toward the center of the passage, following the light as it filled the corridor. “What is this?”

“It looks like a story,” Hunk said, bending down to examine the images more closely. “See, this evil spaceship comes to a planet that kind of looks like Earth. The aliens are searching for something, probably this ball of light thing here?” He pointed to a glowing globe with spindles of light radiating from within, from the core of the planet. “But they’re destroying just about everything in their path, so the planet’s inhabitants take up arms against them until there’s all-out war.” Meandering along to the opposite side of the hall, Hunk pointed at the next piece in the sequence. “It looks like the alien invaders are going to win, but then, this giant spaceman shows up and sends the invaders away, returning peace and prosperity to the land. It looks like that could be the end, but over there,” he took a few more labored steps, “You have the spaceman breaking up into five separate parts.”

“And each part turns into a lion,” Pidge finished, pushing her glasses up her nose as she examined the image more closely. “Our friend spaceman is really a giant robot made up of five lion spaceships.” She sidestepped across the floor, sneakers squeaking across the slick metal sheeting as she took it all in.

“How do you know it’s a lion?” Hunk asked, “I agree it looks feline, but it could be just about any big cat.”

“They have tufty tails. Lions happen to be the only felids who do.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Lance threw his hands up, still focused on the scenes before them.

“Animal Planet,” Pidge replied.

Shiro glanced at Keith. These images were exactly the same as the ones they’d seen before, though he thought there might be more of them here. “So I guess the purple light means one of them’s purple?” he joked, nudging Keith gently with his elbow.

_“Shiro.”_ The voice called again before Keith could reply.

_Black_

“What are you talking about?” Pidge asked, continuing her forward march toward an increasingly intense point of violet light in the distance. “Who’s ‘them?’”

“Shiro and I found a cave out in the desert that led to an underground river system. It had the exact same images on the walls.

“Only they lit up blue,” Shiro added, dropping Keith’s hand voluntarily to take out his phone. “Here.” He scrolled through his pictures before passing it to Lance.

Keith snatched it away, turning his back and swiping through the images.

“Hey! He handed that to me,” Lance protested, making a grab that Keith expertly dodged, stepping aside and lowering his head.

“You took pictures after I asked you not to?” The annoyance growing in Keith’s tone.

“No.” Shiro replied, “I took those before I knew you were even down there. It’s just the glyphs anyway.”

_And I’ve seen those ships, those are Galra ships._

He wanted to share but didn’t know how to say the words without opening himself up, to being exposed as the fraud of a human being he knew he was. How many times had he had the conversation with his superior officers, with his therapist, poking, prodding.

_“I can’t remember!_

_“Well, goddamnit, Shiro, what good are you to us then?”_

They had let him be after the hypnosis sessions. What had he divulged that had made them stop?

_“Shiro.”_

He tried to focus.

“I can see that. We don’t know who knows about this or who might try to access your phone.” Keith’s strained tone stretched the tension of his calm.

When Lance finally plucked the phone back to see, Shiro would have sworn he saw sparks fly from Keith’s agitated gaze.

“You’re being paranoid,” he countered, a fast attempt to de-escalate. “I honestly just remembered those pictures were there. I can delete them, it’s not a big deal.” He knew it would be useless to protest further, even if he was telling the truth.

“I’m not paranoid, and it _is_ a big deal. What rock have you been living under?”

Pidge snorted, “Big Brother is always watching.” She peered over Lance’s arm to see the images of the corresponding blue petroglyphs. “They really are the same.”

She grabbed the phone for a closer look.

“Will you people stop that already? Sheesh!” Lance shoved his hands into his pockets and nudged Hunk with a shoulder. “Come on,” he urged, striding stiffly forward, doing a poor job of feigning his typical nonchalance.

Hunk shrugged and rallied the energy to keep up, but his breathing came hard and labored. A doorway was visible at the end of the passage, its warm violet glow both strange and inviting.

Pidge checked the data on the pictures. “You guys saw these weeks ago and didn’t say anything?! Shiro! I’d expect that from Keith, but not you.”

“Well, I-”

“Nevermind.” She shook her head, then changing topics remarked, “These are exactly the same.”

Keith nodded, “Yeah, I said that. It’s a sequential narrative.” He stopped in front of the final set of images. “I think these people in the matching outfits are the paladins.”

“Wait. _The_ paladins?”

“ _Shiro_!”

Shiro thought he heard Pidge say something, but the voice distracted him again, distorted and softened as if through a pool of water. Soon it would be as thick as space. It came from the other side of the doors.

Keith walked beside him, left hand shoved down his back pocket, right hanging limply at his side. All morning he’d insisted his shoulder didn’t hurt, but it must have been sore. One of the things he had noticed very early on was that Keith’s pain threshold was much higher than his own, or anyone’s, really. Either that, or he was extremely good at pretending, the way some animals, particularly cats, did to protect themselves. Keith didn’t have to, but Shiro didn’t know how to convince him of that.

“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” Keith said, timbre low and soft, “well, maybe I am. I just-” he stopped, rethinking his choice of words. Lance and Pidge pushed through the doors. Hunk followed, staggering at the sight before them.

Keith went on, and Shiro tried to listen, but it sounded more like the endless babble of a bubbling stream than actual words fully matured and formed on the tongue.

“-something were to happen to you because we saw something we shouldn’t have, I-” Keith grabbed Shiro’s arm.

There she stood, the winged lion, sleek and black, and at least twice the size of the blue one. It had been her voice inside Shiro’s head; she had called to him. Gone now, but he knew it was her. Stationed here as she was, her wings were oddly small, vestigial nubs protruding from between her powerful shoulders. In the carvings, they were large, feathered and angelic in their breadth and span. There was no way something that large and un-aerodynamic could possibly take flight, yet the record had been clear on that point. The lions flew.

As if a rope had been tied around his chest, reeling him in, he found himself walking toward it, compelled by the spell of her presence like the thrall of a siren’s song.

“Shiro!” Keith called at the same time Lance yelled, “Watch out!”

Their voices and the glowing, honeycombed barrier suddenly knit in a protective shell around her didn’t even register. Shiro walked headlong into it in his zombified state. Waves of color radiated out from the point of contact, shimmering away across the surface. He rubbed his eyes and forehead, turning his back to the beast.

“That shield didn’t even go up until you were about five feet away!” Hunk warily surveyed the lioness, hands on his hips.

“I don’t understand,” Shiro said, more for his own benefit than anyone else’s. “I thought you wanted me to come here.” He whispered, placing his right hand upon the forcefield’s matrix, for the very first time experiencing sensation from the tips of his cybernetic fingers to the point the prosthesis connected through the fabric of his compression stocking to organic flesh. A surge of power glistened in arcs of electricity from the barrier coursing through him, fizzling off the fingertips of his opposite hand in white tendrils of steam. He connected that palm to the surface as well, completing the circuit, a living conduit for this immense energy, the life-force of the lion herself.

Tentatively, Lance joined him, hands kneading into the barrier, the wake of his disruption merging with Shiro’s over the surface.

Pidge looked from Shiro to Keith. “This is what you really found in the desert, isn’t it? Blue?”

Shiro pulled himself away, just in time to see Keith nod curtly, only once.

“It wasn’t just the pictures. The paladins pilot the lions. Five people, five paladins, five lions. So, what’s the threat?”

“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” Keith replied, watching Shiro.

Pidge followed his gaze before focusing again on the Black Lion, “Why is it missing its leg?” she asked out loud. The right front foot was gone, ripped off at the elbow joint below the shoulder.

“Because it’s mine,” Shiro answered.

“Yours?” Pidge fixed on the lion, confused.

“Yeah, mine. It wasn’t rats down here. I think, I know what I heard was her. She called me by my name.”

Keith indignantly faced away, but he’d called it weeks ago. He’d run a circuit around admitting Shiro might be a paladin, but he had said the Blue Lion had wanted to talk. She’d called him _Champion_. Was that the title of the Black Paladin? What had he done to deserve it, or was it something innate locked within him.

_The Black Paladin._

Somehow, he knew it was all true. He turned back around to face the lioness. What did he still have to do to pass through the barrier?

“Okaaaaay, and?” Pidge still waited for an answer.

Shiro sighed. What had he expected anyway? Of course, his lion would be shuttered to him, missing a limb, or have something otherwise wrong with it. “Everything of mine is broken.” He knew better than to expect more. His eyes followed the cables and wiring, machined gore, sinews, and tendons of metal torn and stretched, hanging frayed from the severed limb. Great dollops of grease and oil oozed eerily from the wound, dripping with a trying slowness onto the platform below.

He felt the cold stare boring through him from behind, and turned just in time to catch Keith’s narrowed eyes, intensely feral, studying him before he pivoted about-face and strode out of the room.

For a long second, Shiro stood frozen in place while the gears in his head ground to a halt. He must have done something, but replaying the events in his head led him no closer to an answer. “Wait! Keith!” Shiro ran after him, meeting him halfway down the hall and grabbing his wrist.

“Get off,” Keith growled, heckles up and wincing as he wrenched his arm free, irascible fury building behind smoldering eyes, muscles tensed.

In his panic, Shiro had forgotten about that right arm. “What did I say?”

He blinked several times, shaking his head almost as if unable to focus. “‘Everything of mine is broken,’” he repeated with the same derision Shiro had spoken it only moments ago.

That was it? There might have been some truth in the statement, but he’d meant it as more of an off-the-cuff exaggeration. His body was less than whole. His mind? More like pegboard than Swiss cheese but he’d take either analogy. Was he missing something? “Well, yes?” he cautiously affirmed.

“Everything?” Hip cocked, head ever so slightly tilted and one hand at his waist, Keith stared at him, still as the stale air surrounding them. Waiting.

“Yes. Everything.” What about those words had upset him?

“Me? Do you mean me too?” His voice barely restrained, riding the seething tide of hurt.

Mouth agape, Shiro struggled to process. He found himself sinking deeper into darkness instead, trying to bury the abject betrayal he had just seen on Keith’s face, coming into sharp focus then blinking out again over trained features. He couldn’t get it out of his head.

_How could you think I would say that about you? About us?_

He _needed_ to get it out of his head.

“Do I have to keep repeating it?”

“No.” Empathetic, understanding, and independent were the qualities Shiro would have used to describe Keith. Never would he have used “insecure,” but there it was, a hooded cobra rearing her head in fear. Keith’s at best tenuous faith lay open and bleeding.

He couldn’t tell if his message went through. Keith turned away and started down the hall again, muttering something to himself and raking a hand through his tangled hair, yanking it through and shaking the snarled wad of hair off his fingers.

Shiro called out, but Keith only ignored him.

Or perhaps he’d focused his attention elsewhere.

_The lions._

Shiro jogged to catch up and tapped him on the left shoulder this time, careful to avoid his previous mistake. “Is Black talking to you?”

Sighing with a strained release, and working through another tangle with more care this time, Keith nodded, glancing aside. “She should be talking to you, but she says you aren’t listening anymore.”

“I am,” he answered, though Keith told the truth. He hadn’t heard the voice in a while.

“No, you’re not. She put up the barrier because you couldn’t hear her. It’s not just everything of yours, it’s also _you_.” A wrinkle of concern had formed between Keith’s brows, eyes bright and reflective in the purple glow of the hallway.

“What are you talking about?” Shiro found himself lost again.

Keith didn’t answer, fixed instead on the figure heading toward them.

“Hey!” Pidge said, palms against her knees as she bent over to catch her breath, “Allura called. I don’t know how she was able to get through all the way down here, I have no signal, but she wants us back up at the restaurant. Pronto.”

Keith crossed his arms tightly over his chest, lips sealed. His defensive posture made him look more like a petulant teenager than did his slim build or the timeless youthfulness of his fine features. He probably wouldn’t say anything more about it, at least not until they could be alone, and even that was provided he didn’t just drop Shiro off at home with a closeted, “see ya.”

It was the attitude, the unspoken, “you upset me, and I’ll get over it, but right now don’t talk to me,” that really got to Shiro. Slow progress had been made working his way around the metaphysical fortifications Keith had in place, yet just when he thought he’d worked it all out, he found more. It had probably taken years to build those walls.

All he wanted was to be allowed inside.

Today was not the day to harp on that. He’d already done enough damage.

They waited for Lance and Hunk to catch up. One arm over Lance’s shoulders for support, Hunk lumbered along. “I can’t go that fast,” he said, uncharacteristically ruffled. “Someone tried to blow me up,” he added as if trying to justify himself. He didn’t need to. “If Allura wants to talk right now, she can come down here.”

“I’m with you, buddy,” Lance added, in an offering of solidarity.

“We all are.” Pidge trudged along, crunching data on her tablet.

“Just take it easy, Hunk.” Shiro touched one of the pictures on the wall with a pinpoint of the same color light from a cybernetic finger. “She can wait. We go together.”

 

+++

 

Why did Allura have the Black Lion? It had to be hers, there was no question about that other than the semantics of the term “ownership.” The truth of it was they had not entered a cellar, but a separate underground space, much like a fallout shelter complete with the requisite 30-degree incline to deflect gamma radiation.

Assuming it was her lion, she had managed to collect at least three of the requisite five “paladins.” At least three that he had identified with certainty.

That left Hunk and himself with Yellow and Red. An educated guess told him exactly who belonged with which lion.

Keith had so many questions.

He held off lighting the cigarette dangling from his lips until they were back outside in the rear lot, disregarding Shiro’s pointed sigh as he walked past the cars.

As soon as he stopped processing his own thoughts, the voices of the lions came trickling back, no longer a comfort as once they had been. This was what he had feared. After finding the Blue Lion out in the desert, he hadn’t wanted to research her; he’d wanted her instead to disappear as if he’d never set his eyes upon her physical form. Their dim din rose to a tumultuous roar, overwhelming his mind, filling every nook and cranny until there was no place left for him to hide. Blue had felt her pilot through Black and ceaselessly prattled on in excited chatter. She wanted to meet face to face. Keith could do that for her, right? And then there was Black, asking why Shiro disappeared. She’d been so pleased to learn his name, and she hoped he wouldn’t reject her. The other two, Green and Yellow, buzzed in the background, a steady white noise, and he wished he could turn them all off. Red remained blessedly offline.

He focused his thoughts on Shiro, temporarily dampening the internal racket. Shiro, with his unusually severe case of foot in mouth, had likely never meant to offend, but the implications had cut too close for comfort. He might have overreacted. Sensory overload might have been the underlying cause, but there was never an excuse for bad behavior. All he’d wanted was to excuse himself before he said or did something he’d regret.

Years of hard work and ruined relationships of all kinds taught him that lesson, and here he was falling back into those habits. He knew from experience that once something was said, it could never be unsaid, and once an action done, it could never be undone.

Time came rapidly closing in, and when he ruined everything here like he always did, he’d leave. He technically owned his family’s old plot and a ramshackle shanty out in Corona, NM, northwest of Roswell with lots of dirt and open sky as far as the eye could see, it was also much farther away from civilization than his pay-by-the-month parcel of campground with barebones access to water and electricity.

His satellite hotspot could go anywhere, and in theory, he could build a solar grid for power.

Curls of smoke drifted toward the sky.

He hadn’t irreparably damaged anything yet, and Shiro was not wrong.

Normal or even something remotely resembling a societal norm would never be in the cards for Keith. “Broken” fit, as much as he wanted to deny it.

At the rear entrance, Allura and Coran waited, expressions neutral, but the heavy burden of impatience saturated the space around them. In one hand, Coran held a large, black, hard-shell case.

Allura had arrived in form-fitting white leather pants decorated with a smattering of gold and silver riveted stars, a matching moto jacket, and touring boots. She looked good, and from the guile in her grin when she winked at Lance, she undoubtedly knew it. Coran’s eccentric manner and over-waxed mustache lent themselves well to his wardrobe, remarkably reminiscent of a late 19th century European military formal wear, or maybe he was just channeling Sergeant Pepper, his blue satin jacket complete with gold braid and fringed epaulets.

Lance whistled then clicked his tongue, shooting finger pistols at Allura. “Take me to the Milky Way!” he flashed his most flattering grin and managed to blow a kiss before Hunk swatted the back of his head in disgust.

Pidge brushed past, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes. “Don’t be gross, Lance.”

“Let’s all go inside. Shall we?” Coran prompted, marshaling them in single file and followed up by Allura, who pulled the door shut behind them. “I suppose we should start with the good news, yes?” He set the case beside the door.

“As opposed to what? The bad?” Keith mumbled.

“The ugly?” Hunk added, sharing a smirk.

Coran had an agenda and knew what he wanted. Keith just wished he would skip the pretense, watching as he shifted aside for Allura to take the lead, folding his white-gloved hands behind his back.

Leaning back against the wall, Keith crossed his legs in decided indifference. Hunk took a seat with Lance at the ready beside him, Pidge hoisted herself up to sit on the counter, and Shiro took up a position opposite his own. The light from the prosthetic throbbed with each rise and fall of Shiro’s chest.

Keith tore his eyes away. “How long were you waiting?” he asked, looking first at Allura and then to Coran, before lazily examining his hands and pulling the knife out of his belt to scrape the grit from under his nails.

Allura answered first, eyeing the glowing blue sigil on the crossguard. “We only just arrived.”

‘“Only’ as in,” Pidge checked her phone, “fifty-two minutes ago.”

Lance tapped his foot anxiously, spreading his fingers wide and stretching before gripping the back of Hunk’s chair.

“That’s not so long, really,” she replied, then to Hunk, “How are you feeling?”

Guarded and cautious, Hunk studied her before responding. “Much better, thanks.”

“Come on, Allura,” Lance whined. “We know you’re dying to address the elephant in the room. Just get it out already.” He shifted his weight, his thigh just barely pressed against Hunk’s shoulder. It could have been nothing, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice the small gestures and affectionate touching Lance had been at all day. That he harbored some very confused feelings for his best friend, Keith was certain, though he couldn’t tell what Hunk thought, or if he’d even caught on. At least not yet.

Allura acknowledged him with a slight tilt of her head but instead turned to Keith, “And you?”

“I’ll be fine,” he answered truthfully, not once looking away from her hard, bright eyes.

She slowly lifted her chin and lowered it again as if unsure whether or not to say more. “All right,” she said, stepping slowly around the counter, eliminating the divide between them. Pidge swiveled on the seat of her pants, following Allura as she pushed herself around. “Let me ask you this: What were you doing in my cellar?”

Keith shrugged. How much did she know anyway? “Rats.”

Shiro had suggested it, after all.

“You found the Black Lion.” She stated blandly, leaning back on the countertop with her elbows.

No one said a word. Yes, they’d found it all right. It hadn’t been particularly well-hidden.

“ _Someone_ damaged the keypad,” Allura continued, staring pointedly at Shiro, “but the monitor system we have in place down there wasn’t affected, and we tracked your progress. I have a location record for each of you.”

“It can give us some basic biometrics as well,” Coran added. “For example, Shiro’s heart usually beats at a steady 55 beats per minute. Today, however, it started out at nearly 80 bpm, which is high for him, then slowed down to normal while the lot of you made your way down the hall, almost like it was being regulated. It fluctuated a little in the Black Lion’s hangar, but not much, and then spiked up again right before you all left and shortly returned to normal.” Suspicion clung to his words, “Of course the scan doesn’t always work properly. There were several anomalous readings, but nothing to be concerned over. Our equipment is quite old, so I don’t expect it to work perfectly all the time, just most of the time-”

“Actually, it is concerning,” Pidge cut him off. “First of all, the technology you’re describing does not exist. End of discussion. Second, if you are telling the truth, that’s highly unethical, Coran. Did Shiro give his consent before heading down there? No. Did any of us? Unlikely. Next, you’re going to tell us about our genetic makeup, or-”

“Well actually-” Coran hesitated, looking to Allura for permission to continue.

She held her hand out with a shake of her head. “Enough.”

What precisely had Pidge hit on?

Keith shifted, his patience wearing thin. “So, what did you want to talk to us about? The Black Lion?”

Shiro moved to say something, but abruptly changed his mind and folded his arms, settling back against the wall.

Allura scrutinized Keith, her eyes large and as boundless as the cosmos. “Coran and I,” She allowed her gaze to linger on each of them, respectively, meaningfully. “We’re fugitives on the run from the Galra empire, and we’ve been stranded on your planet for the last, let’s just say many, _many_ years. Our measurements of time differ substantially from those you use here.”

If they hadn’t found giant robot cats or radio signals from the far side of the moon, if he didn’t believe Shiro’s story or in any of the truths mixed up with the sensational tripe he researched for his books, maybe, just maybe Keith would have been surprised.

Lance yawned. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of us, you’re talking to the wrong group of people. At this point, you could tell us Mullet over there,” he thumbed to Keith, “is a space alien and no one would bat an eye.”

Of all the things Lance could have said, he picked that. Keith huffed and looked away, immediately regretting his reaction.

_Can’t you even take a joke?_

“Okay, well maybe _he_ minds.” Lance shrugged.

“I am _not_ a space alien!” Keith took a step toward him, his left hand still gripping the hilt of the dagger. _I thought we were on the same team here?_

Lance stepped toward him “What is your problem? I never said you were, geez what’s wrong with you?”

“Me?” Keith raised his voice. “I’m not the one-”

“Can it,” Shiro spoke up, interrupting their banter.

He must have been running a shorter fuse than he’d realized. Relaxing back against the wall, he traced the glowing sigil on the dagger with his index finger. One side then the other, flipping it over, admiring the balanced way it fit in his grip. Annoying as it was, Lance had a valid point. No one showed any sign of surprise.

“They look tense, Princess,” Coran remarked.

“Yes, th-”

“Whoa! Princess?” Hunk asked, cutting Allura off, brows arching suddenly so high they threatened to leave his forehead. “How’d we get to princess?”

“I thought you said you were fugitives,” Pidge remarked.

“We are, and it’s just a formality. I am, was, the princess of Altea, a small planet in a galaxy on the opposite side of this supercluster. The Galra destroyed our planet.”

“Technically,” Coran corrected, “she’s my queen. We might be the only two Alteans left.”

“Well, isn’t that sweet.” Lance huffed, leaning into Hunk and folding his arms tightly, hands tucked into his armpits.

“If you say so, but being princess or queen has no meaning without legacy. This underdeveloped little planet is, practically out in the how would you say...?” Allura looked to Coran to provide her with the idiom.

“The frozen zambuashes of Urdah Fenthe,” Cora proudly supplied.

Allura recoiled, cringing. “There’s no need to be offensive!” she scolded.

Coran’s hand flew to his heart, or where Keith presumed his heart would be if he were human. “Princess! I would never-”

“Anyway,” Allura continued, “The Galra stop at nothing to get what they need, resources, manpower.” She turned to Shiro, “You know this much is true.”

Shiro flexed his robotic fingers. The whir of the device’s internal mechanisms disrupting the momentary silence. “Yes. I do.” He nodded, raising his eyes, more distant and darker than Keith had ever seen. Scratching the side of his head, Shiro went on, “If they just wanted our people or mineral ore, they would have taken it by now. Do you know why they’re here?”

Allura’s shoulders slumped. “I think they want the Black Lion.”

Shoving the dagger back between his belt and the waist of his jeans, Keith spoke up, “Are you saying they’re here because of you? Because if those aliens are in fact looking for you or that sentient lion thing downstairs, you would do well to get yourself and it very far away from here.” It sounded harsh in the delivery, but he didn’t know how else to convey the sentiment. Assuming truth in Allura and Coran’s story, removing the lion would effectively eliminate the reason the Galra were still hanging around Earth and sending messages from the moon. Unless Shiro was somehow tied to that as well? He didn’t know, he couldn’t, but if they were, in fact, capable of destroying entire worlds, they were a potential risk to the safety of Earth.

_Who else knows? The government? The military?_

“It’s not so simple, Keith-”

He cut her off. “Of course it’s not-”

“The lion is dormant,” she raised her voice, “and our ship is broken.”

Coran shifted his weight. “Power failure, we can’t replenish the supply because our energy crystal shattered on impact.”

“We use quintessence as a power source,” Allura clarified, “and while I can use my body as a conduit, I can’t hold the energy and with our crystal damaged beyond repair, we’re stuck. This planet is a well of quintessence. If I could repair the crystal, we can leave. But there’s one more problem. The Galra also use quintessence to power their fleet, and once they find out just how much is lying latent beneath the crust, they’ll be here in a flick of a dobosh, uh, within minutes to suck it dry.”

“Quintessence,” Keith repeated. “Is that-” he tried to remember how the voices, no, the lions, had put it to him without asking them directly.

“Anima?” Shiro suggested.

“Anima?” Allura looked to Coran for input.

“Close enough,” he shrugged. “Energy. The supernal life force of the universe. We could probably find a new energy crystal if the Black Lion would wake up like we expected it to this afternoon.”

“Why didn’t it?” Hunk asked, resting his chin on his arms, folded across the top of the chair.

“It’s complicated. The Black Lion stopped responding to me ages ago. I believe she is Shiro’s lion now?”

Shiro glanced at Keith before speaking, “I thought I heard something, and then when we were closer to the lion, it stopped.”

Coran checked something on his phone, absently twisting his mustache. “According to your biometrics, you took a high dose of opioids with a beta blocker just over an hour and a half ago.”

“Opioids? Shiro?” Hunk turned his head to Shiro and then back to Coran. “Wait, your system can tell you that?”

“Unethical,” Pidge added. “You know he’s on medication, what does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s also none of your business,” Lance added.

Allura folded her arms over her chest and cocked her hip, grinding one sharp heel into the hardwood floor, “Actually it is. If Shiro is so dependent on those drugs he can’t hear that lion, it won’t wake up. If it doesn’t wake up, we can’t get it off the planet, and to _Keith’s_ point, I would rather not fight that battle here.”

Why wasn’t Shiro defending himself? Keith took another step forward, fists balled at his sides. “Look, why do you think he takes that shit? I can’t imagine what it must be like for him. Can you? Or to have gone through even half of what he has. What he remembers? Do you think he isn’t trying hard enough? You have no right to berate him for it!”

He covered the space between them without realizing it, only halted by Pidge’s hand, the slightest resistance against his shoulder, and a firm shake of her head that told him he needed to stop and breathe.

Allura hadn’t moved. “If I could believe that were the case, I’d be inclined to agree and drop the argument, but Shiro has been doping himself since well before you showed up, so don’t presume you know any better than the rest of us.” She leveled Shiro with her glare, a tight frown marking her displeasure.

Keith glared at her, then shifted his gaze to Shiro.

Averting his eyes, Shiro squirmed like a worm beneath the concentrated beam of light through a magnifier. He looked as if he might fizzle up, all his muscle mass dried to powder and falling like dust from his blanched white skeleton. With no more connective tissue, his bones tumbled to the ground with the hollow clack of wooden porch chimes.

“It’s not just about the Black Lion and getting us off this rock. We need to put an end to the spread of Galra imperialism. The lions were built by my father to protect our people.”

Coran continued, “You’ve seen the carvings that lead to the chamber. The five lions are quite powerful on their own but combined, they become something even greater-“

“Yeah, yeah,” Pidge waved her hand dismissively, “a giant robot.”

“Voltron.” Coran corrected. “The final hope in the fight against the Galra from here to the outer grid of the Vlexlar quadrant.”

Lance sighed.

“The Galra haven’t started a war here. Why are you so obviously trying to recruit us to fight your war for you? I don’t want to fight your war. If the paladins go with the lions and the lions are yours, that ship on the moon, that has probably been there for decades, I might add, has not threatened Earth. What’s it to us?” Hunk asked, ticking his points off on his fingers and double checking the count.

Keith looked at his hands. The lions had been listening. His stomach gurgled and squealed. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to think. “What they’re saying is that Earth is on their radar. But I’d hazard to assume the Galra expect us to be prudent. By their standards, we’re likely underdeveloped and primitive. Our spacecraft can barely get people to the moon and back, and it has hardly improved in the forty-seven years since we did that. We know they’re there, but we’re powerless to do anything about it. The transmission we intercepted mentioned a bounty for a soldier because something woke up.” He purposefully avoided saying anything he hadn’t heard from Shiro, but he knew exactly what the sender had intended to convey.

“Yes, Keith,” Allura replied, “The Red Lion awoke, and they’re looking for the Red Paladin. I’ve never known a lion to awaken from dormancy without her paladin.”

What exactly did she mean by “dormant?” Red’s had been present until fairly recently. The last time he’d heard her speak was only two months before he’d noticed Shiro frequenting the Denny’s. Silent but not gone, as he was now aware. She had forced him to experience what Hunk had, siphoned through her from the Yellow Lion. Her absence only allowed him to hear the other voices with more clarity. The distracting tumult progressively worsening to some yet unknown end.

Allura and Coran watched them expectantly. No one bit.

“Wait,” A new thought took formed from the primordial sludge of his brain. “Does any of this have something to do with whatever attacked Hunk?”

“We don’t know,” Coran spoke first, “and we don’t think your military knows either. Nothing more than that one transmission has been intercepted from the ship posted at the moon.”

“Fine.” He would accept that. “However, if there’s a bounty on the Red Paladin, isn’t it possible that someone either thinks Hunk is the Red Paladin or wants to draw out the Red Paladin?”

“Of course it is!” Allura exclaimed, “the site was already combed clean by the time Coran and I even knew it had happened. We know nothing about the attacker or their motives or-”

“Other than to kill me? Because I’m pretty sure that part was intentional,” Hunk said, dryly.

“Hold that thought,” Allura continued. Coran passed the black case across the counter. Allura took it and set it on the nearest table. “Here, let me show you something, and this should clarify the attack on Hunk as well.”

Thumbing open the latch, the lid snapped up, and she turned it around to face her captive audience.

“The five of you are here because you can handle the lions’ demands, and most importantly, they have chosen you. It had been so long since I’d sensed their presence, and I’ve been looking for the Paladins for so long. I met you first, Shiro, and ever since then, I have known this: the lions are coming back to life.”

Tucked inside were four curved, H-shaped devices, resembling pull handles or small steering control. They gleamed with a matte sheen, mostly white, but with colored panels fitted around the grips.

“These are the Bayards, the traditional Paladin weapon, but more importantly, they unlock the abilities of the lions.” She passed them out, one by one, blue to Lance, green to Pidge, examining the device and immediately wondering how the strange thing could be called a weapon. Hunk held the yellow one flat out in one hand, curious, but not ready to commit. Keith took the red one as she handed it to him, rubbing his palm over the curved sides.

_Red Paladin._

Why did it have to be him?

He’d seen these devices before. Not these particular ones, but a different one packed away years ago when he’d cleared out his father’s old house.

“I’m sorry Shiro,” Allura went on, “the Black Bayard has been missing since the previous Paladin had it, I-”

“I have it,” Keith announced, pushing the red one right back into Allura’s hands, as if ridding himself of it and voicing his thoughts would help him solve the puzzle he hadn’t quite worked his way through.

Eyes wide, she fumbled, staring at Keith.

Everyone stared at Keith.

The Red Bayard clattered to the floor, it’s rounded legs bouncing against the wood until it rested still and quiet.

“What have I done?” Allura mouthed, collapsing to the floor as she slid down, back against the counter.

Keith had never seen her like this. Her head fell to her hands, elbows on her knees, shaking. A stifled sob wracked her body, shoulders shuddering against her will.

He didn’t know what to do, and no one moved to comfort her. The air lay thick with shock and fear and the unknown. Tentatively, he reached out.

Then stopped, frozen stock still as he knit together the missing parts of his own story.

One, two, three, four, five.

Red, blue, green, yellow…

Black.

The Black Bayard was in a storage unit in Roswell where he’d stashed his father’s things ages ago. The state had given him the deed to the property on his eighteenth birthday and it seemed the logical thing to do at the time. His father’s illness had long been a mystery. It had left his body whole and twisted his mind, a plague in the night faster than radiation poisoning.

Akira Kogane, Sr., had flown for the Air Force, first as a fighter pilot in Vietnam and later in the development of new aircraft. He’d thought the Black Bayard was a souvenir, a broken off piece from some experimental steering column or console and hadn’t given it another thought.

Funny he now did the same thing.

“Why do I have the Black Bayard?” he asked, wanting and not wanting to know the answer. He picked up the red one and replaced it in the case. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want the one he had either, especially now that he had a better idea of what it was.

Coran knelt at Allura’s side, gently rubbing her shoulders, “There, there, princess,” trying to soothe her with his words, but she shrugged him off.

“Allura?” Keith glanced at Shiro, then the others in the room. It wasn’t that he needed permission, but he could feel the tension, the palpable anticipation mixed with hesitation, and knew he was walking a tight line.

“You really have it?” Shiro asked.

“Yes,” Keith replied. From somewhere buried within himself, he dredged up a memory of silver hair, like a blanket of moonlight. He shut his eyes and composed himself to a deadly stillness. Inhaling deeply, he relaxed his rigid shoulders and uncurled his white-knuckled fists, at once full of pity and rage, and if his eyes had been daggers, he might have cut out her heart, right then and there. He dared not touch the weapon at his back. “What did you do to my dad?”

Four sets of eyes were locked on him, crawling over and under his skin with disbelief and curiosity.

Coran remained focused on Allura, neither of them looked his way.

Slowly and with a gut-wrenching sob, Allura sat up. “Coran and I have been stuck on this rock for a very long-”

“What did you do to my dad?” he repeated. He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but he did, and it broke with the plea, betraying his inability to separate out and package his emotions. The blood rushed from his head and his hands. A cold sweat dripped from his armpits and prickled across his shoulders, his hair beginning to stick to his neck and the sides of his face.

“Keith, I'm trying to explain,” she clawed at her sleeves in hands crossed over her chest and digging her nails into the bunched up leather, “but I need to start at the beginning.”

“Haven’t you already done that?” Lance butted in, hands on his hips, demanding a reply. “Whatever it is, just tell him!”

Running his tongue over his chapped bottom lip, Keith let his arms hang at his sides, right shoulder throbbing, and shifted his weight to one leg in balanced contrapposto.

 

+++

 

Shiro couldn’t decide what to do, so he did nothing. This exchange was between Allura and Keith.

Keith stood poised to react despite the casual stance he’d forced himself to assume. He channeled his instinct to a calculated restraint, every muscle tensed the way an apex predator prepared and waited to greet its prey. All the pliant softness that Shiro had learned and known lay buried now beneath layers of bristling exterior. He’d seen it start to shift only seconds ago, now completely fortified, the barrier like a curtain dropped to the exclusion of everyone else.

On the one hand, Keith wouldn’t seek comfort but probably needed it. On the other, well, Shiro didn’t have another. For now, he decided to let Allura speak but took up a position close enough to be a presence.

Who was he kidding? Keith needed no one and nothing. The afternoon had left him thinking about that. Eventually, he would decide he didn’t want Shiro anymore. What was there to want, anyway? He pushed those thoughts aside.

“My father, King Alfor of Altea, was the one who sent us here. He was afraid the Galra emperor-”

“Zarkon,” Coran supplied.

“The Galra Emperor Zarkon,” Allura echoed, “would capture Voltron and use it against us. We were losing the war, a war we were fighting because Zarkon wanted our lions. That’s what happens when you build a weapon, and don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s for good. Anything made in the name of what is ‘just’ can easily be corrupted for evil, and everyone thinks they’re the righteous judge. They came, the Galra fleet, with all their force and might and a device to drain the quintessence from the very soul of Altea. We didn’t stand a chance against their mechanical soldiers and the dark magic of their sorcerers. In a last-ditch effort to prevent Voltron from falling, and to save as many of our people as he could, my father opened a wormhole to the opposite side of this supercluster. He sent Voltron through first, so we could have time to teleport as many as we could on board our ship before traveling to safety ourselves. The ship sustained such massive damage from Galra artillery, however, that we lost control, and it fell into the wormhole before we could bring on anyone else. My father had ordered me to the cryo-tanks at the center of the ship, and Coran had accompanied me there, so we were protected when the hull exploded on exit. None of the crew survived. Including my father.”

She stopped, every breath a shudder as she collected her nerve. “Since landing here, everything has been madness from trying to rebuild our ship to finding the lions again. We didn’t know where they had landed or if they had landed at all. The Black Lion and the Red Lion were together for a short time, and I was able to bring Black here, but at the loss of her paw and the surrender of the Red Lion to Zarkon’s personal advisor. The Black Lion has refused to let me pilot her since.”

The lion’s gift was trust, and for whatever reason, the Black Lion no longer trusted Allura to pilot her. That much he understood, but curious gaps still remained in her story.

“I needed to find a pilot capable of flying that lion, and if I were able to locate the other lions, they would all need pilots as well. Paladins. And then, about 27 years ago, I was buying groceries and I encountered a man with his small child with a great density of pure quintessence around them. I’d never seen that much raw energy surrounding a human before and I thought for sure that man would be able to fly the Black Lion. Even if only temporarily, so I approached him, couching my request as a job, and I-” She swallowed back her tears and wiped the heel of her palm across her eyes. “I thought the man was the one with so much quintessence. He was a pilot, smart, young. When we went to see the lion, I couldn’t sense that energy anymore, but I was so certain he had to be the one. I took him inside, into the cockpit. I did everything I could think of to get that lion to accept him. Infusing him with pure quintessence, channeling it through him, transferring it from the earth and charging it through the air. Nothing worked and by the end of it he was so sick, I-” She buried her face in her hands again, “Keith,” she faltered, barely audible, “it was never him at all. It was you.”

Several long moments passed as Keith clenched and unclenched his hands, working his jaw, focused intensely at a point somewhere on the floor. “When did you figure it out?” he snarled.

“I didn’t-”

“Answer my question!” he snapped, pounding his fists upon the nearest table with a loud crack, the wood splitting beneath his hands. He shuddered, following the fissure with his eyes.

Pidge flinched away. Lance jumped, gripping Hunk’s shoulder, pressing his fingers in hard. Instead of shrugging him off, Hunk took his hand and held it.

“He never recovered, you know that, right?” Keith went on in a strained and agonized vent, “I have one parent, _one_ , and you took him from me! Do you honestly expect me to believe you only just realized this? We have the same fucking name!” He grabbed the nearest chair and heaved it as hard as he could at the wall, three of the legs punching through the sheetrock, jamming it halfway into the side of the building. Breathing hard, he stood there, surveying his work. Wiping the sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes, he shook out his right hand, clutching at that same shoulder with his left.

Shiro reached out to him, hand on his back and replaying the dialogue in his head. All Keith had told him was that his father was institutionalized. “Keith?”

With less than a glance, Keith stiffly brushed him off and spat on the floor by Allura’s feet, finally able to look at her. “Find yourself a different fifth pilot. I’m not going to fly anything for you. And I don’t care about some bullshit bounty on an alleged Red Paladin, but if it keeps my friends out of danger, by all means tell the Galra where to come find me. I never want to see or hear from you again.” Composing his features to a rigid, unreadable mask, he let himself out, the door slamming shut behind him.

“‘Akira Kogane.’ How could I have been so stupid?” Allura murmured. Not even Coran offered consolation.

By what sort of strange coincidental fluke had this happened? Outside, the engine turned over and the truck skidded and crunched through the gravel out of the lot.

_And you thought Keith was going to wait for you?_

He’d taken too long to process all the parts, but something nagging at the back of Shiro's mind told him he shouldn’t have let Keith go alone.

“Lance?” he asked. “I need your keys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing a party of seven is difficult. I’m not even going to pretend that wasn’t a chore.
> 
> I’m sorry it took me so long. On the plus side, the next chapter is also written.
> 
> (Feel free to come talk to me, I inhabit a nice, quiet corner of twitter~ @nonedere)


	8. A God-Awful Small Afair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Road Trip!

_ Awareness is wonderful. _

_ Awareness is difficult. _

_ Awareness hurts. _

- AIMEE, Orochi Tower (Anansi Omega), Kaidan

Funcom. (2012). The Secret World [Computer software]. Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts.

 

+++

 

“Keith!” Shiro called, shouldering his way inside. A burr on the metal door frame snagged his shirt, ripping the fabric of his sleeve, and the aluminum door slapped against the framework several times before the creaking spring held it shut. The truck sat parked out front, where it hadn’t been an hour earlier. Keith had to be close; whatever he’d been doing, he’d finally decided to go home. A home. Shiro wanted to believe his place served the purpose equally well, but the present situation left him doubtful. Something inside smelled of bile and fuel. Keys, cigarettes, lighter, wallet, empty cans of Vienna Sausages, corned beef hash, that ridiculous knife, and a bottle of Ronsonol lighter fluid lay scattered across the counter. Vomit coated the sink. Shiro’s heart sprang to his throat in uncontrolled palpitations.

Where are you?

“KEI-“ he yelled. “Oh.”

Partially clothed, Keith lay on the floor at his feet, knees bent. He stared up, pupils fully dilated and eyes glazed over, unfocused on an approximation of where Shiro stood. A chunky dribble of partially chewed meat and stomach acid trailed from the side of his mouth down his face. His fingers gripped the t-shirt wadded up in one hand, knuckles split raw and bloodied. All the cabinets lining the wall were left flung wide, various household detergents and cleaners tumbled in disarray like the aftermath of a battle, and no one knew who had won. Mouth clamped tightly shut, Keith struggled with each breath, and his nostrils flared with each expanding and contracting pull of his ribcage. The reddish-orange cat perched upon his chest, a personal guardian, but less an angel and more a tiny nursemaid. One paw patted his lips and stayed there as she followed his gaze up to meet Shiro’s.

She howled.

Grit mixed with blood streaked in rivulets across Keith’s face. He’d been crying, involuntary eye leakage that carved rivers through the war paint of his grief.

Shiro could only imagine his embarrassment. Carefully, he lowered himself and sat cross-legged, close enough to comb his fingers carefully through Keith’s tangled hair, working out the snarls. Swollen skin, bruised black and blue around the scabbed wounds, partially reopened, created a grotesque topography of his entire right shoulder.

The cat pulled her paw back and licked it, spreading her claws and gnawing at the webbing between her toes. Reaching up, Keith stroked her fur.

“I threw up on my shirt, and I couldn’t find the soap.”

Shiro shook his head. Dish soap lived under the sink, a bar of soap in the shower, hand soap beside the bathroom sink faucet. At least it had all been there that morning. “I think we need to talk. Actually, I think you need to talk. To me.”

Keith shook his head.

“Yes,” Shiro spoke calmly, gently rubbing his thumb over Keith’s thick brows and along his cheekbones, smearing the bloodied salt and dirt. “When I signed up for you, I didn’t do it part and parcel.” 

“As is condition. Limited warranty.”

“No exchanges or returns.”

“Broken.”

Shiro groaned. He had said that; the word had come straight from his mouth in a moment of frustration. “No, I’m the one who’s broken. Look at me. I’m a physical wreck, a psychological disaster, and the single high point in my present existence is the mere fact that you’re a part of it. I am so fortunate to have you in my life. I don’t even really know how to explain-”

Suddenly, Keith shoved Red away and pushed himself to his knees, head between his hands, palms pressed so tightly to his temples his joints turned white. “Just stop! Okay! Shut the goddamned fuck UP!” He spat through clenched teeth, back to Shiro. Collapsing forward, he barely managed to catch himself before he kissed the floor.

“Whoa, Keith!” Shiro recoiled. What had he said? He’d replayed the phrasing over and over for the past few hours, certain that the message held as much clarity as possible. He reached out, but pulled back in second thought, fingertips brushing against the jutting vertebrae of Keith’s spine.

He flinched at Shiro’s touch. “Not you.” The words came thickly strangled, his breath in great heaves. “Not. You.”

Lions? Had Keith been able to turn them off, Shiro knew he would have done so long ago. Was this why he secluded himself out here like this, why he had seemed so reluctant to let himself make friends?

“Please leave.” A sob hitched in Keith’s throat and he covered his head with his arms, fingers twisting in the curls at the nape of his neck.

When you are like this? “No.” As soon as he’d spoken, he smelled it again, the aromatic bouquet of benzine or naphtha or-

Lighter fluid.

“They won’t go.”

Hopelessness skirted the edge of a hoarse and tired whisper, a powerless feeling Shiro knew well. Keith wasn’t crazy; they had both heard the Black Lion earlier that day. Shrugging off the prosthetic, Shiro crawled forward to wrap his arms tightly around Keith’s light and limp form. The odor lingered on Keith’s sweat-shiny skin and in his hair. A bluish tinge marked his extremities, all of him cold and clammy to the touch.

_ Shit. _

Staccato beats of emotion, unidentified scraps of fear, panic, and adrenaline, washed through Shiro as he became the net, everything catching and tugging as time as circumstance pushed through the voids. Steeling his resolve, he willed the oncoming wave away, but this was worse than he’d initially thought. “I can’t make it stop, but I’m here. I just need you to tell me one thing.”

Keith tried to swivel around, but Shiro held him fast.

“Do I have to call poison control?”

“Shiro,” Keith scoffed, “I think we’re well outside any window where the hotline might be of assistance.”

“You drank that lighter fluid, didn’t you?”

Keith coughed, a raspy, wracking noise from fluid-filled lungs as he struggled weakly against Shiro’s hold. “I just-”

“Yes or no.”

“I-”

Shiro jerked him around, his one hand like a claw digging into Keith’s jaw, holding his face. He hated doing it, hated being like this, hated the smoldering rage building behind the bright eyes staring back at him. “Yes, or no,” he demanded, hard and dangerously low.

Keith jerked his face away with the last remnant of his feral strength. “Yes, okay? I swallowed down all twelve ounces of it, then I threw it back up into the sink. Three times. It’s everywhere, and the stench is worse than your crappy futon after we’ve decimated it with sweat, sex, spit, and shit.”

Spittle flew from each enunciated word and Shiro dipped his head to wipe his face on his shoulder.

Keith continued. “I can barely see, and I feel like utter garbage. Are you happy now? Just take your hand off of me and leave.” His words were quiet, pained, hard, and sharp, but his shoulders slumped and no fight remained in his bones.

“Like hell am I leaving you! Did you even stop to think about what you were doing?” Adrenaline coursed through Shiro’s veins, with the mounting fear and hurt he still felt. He tried to maintain his calm, voice level, pushing the dread hysteria down to cope.

_ FOCUS! _

“We are not having this conversation.”

“You could have killed yourself!”  _ What if you had?  _ Shiro didn’t want to think about it, but the seeded thoughts now grew, the taproot anchored in his mushy gray matter, the fibrous tendrils spreading and the flower budding.

“That was the point! I don’t want to die! I’m not trying to die, but I can’t be like this.” The desperate refrain bespoke an anguish from Keith’s heart, one refracted against his soul and shattered into the millions of fragments that made up the stars. Red pressed herself into his side.

“I know.” Something had happened here Shiro didn’t understand. He wanted to, and he believed Keith. His sanity depended on it. It was why he checked himself before he said things he could never take back, words about selfishness and impulse. This was something else, a desperate attempt to drown out the noise. And yet. “I need to call poison control.”

“You don’t. I’ll be fine.”

Shiro pushed himself to his feet and filled a glass of water from a jug in the fridge, passing it down. “Prove it.”

Resentfully, Keith gulped down the contents of the glass and thrust it back into the waiting hand. Shiro refilled it. “One more.”

Complying, Keith did as instructed, this time dropping the empty glass on the worn linoleum.

With a low breath, Shiro sat down again and dragged him back in, chin over his left shoulder. Smooth and pale it reminded him deceptively of porcelain, but he knew; Keith had been forged of a mettle more resilient. “How can I make it better?”

Keith said nothing, leaning against him with a comfortable fondness despite their acerbic exchange, or perhaps it was just exhaustion.

Okay, Shiro could try again.

“Get in a fight? I bet you got in trouble a lot as a kid.”

“Understatement of the year.” Keith sucked in the snot pooled at the back of his throat with a loud snort. “I’m hungry,” he announced, uninterested in furthering the conversation.

Shiro could take a hint most of the time. “Then let’s feed you.”

“Can we go to Denny’s?” Keith shifted around and tilted his chin up to look down his nose, meeting Shiro’s eyes.

At this point, he would take Keith anywhere. “We’ll go wherever you want.”

Keith nodded. Extending his hand, he poked Shiro’s bicep through the hole in the lavender-gray dress shirt. “You tore your favorite shirt.”

“Yeah,” He looked down at it, sadly. “I guess I did, but I’m so glad I found you.”

A deep furrow formed between Keith’s brows in what Shiro could only assume was mild confusion. “I wasn’t lost.”

 

+++

 

“I didn’t get into a fight.” Keith swallowed the mouthful of barely chewed Jalapeño Bacon Sriracha burger, glancing quickly over at Joy watching them from the register and back to Shiro. “I went to the gym, and I guess I overdid it.” Wiping the back of his hand across his chin, he smeared the dripping juices across his raw, split knuckles before wiping it off on his napkin. It stung.

“We should spar sometime.”

Keith narrowed his eyes, considering. While Shiro was completely incompetent when it came to flushing spiders and getting rid of the small game his cat brought home, he was, no doubt, capable of landing a solid punch. He even sounded confident.

_ Champion. _

“And you’ll wear that thing and use it?” Keith gestured to Shiro’s right hand, picked up some fries and shoved them in his mouth.

“No.”

Keith swallowed before speaking again. He’d forgotten to chew, and the fried potatoes scraped against the sides of his throat the entire way down. Squeezing his eyes shut, he downed a gulp of water before opening them again and slamming his fist into his chest. “Why not? What are you so afraid of? You touched me with it once, but then you pulled away almost immediately. I remember thinking, ‘I guess he just doesn’t want to kiss me.’ But you deliberately avoid touching anyone with it. So maybe I’m not just being sensitive. I mean,” he continued, “You always act like you’re not in control of it, but it’s a machine. Not only that, it’s your machine. It doesn’t work unless you tell it to.” He paused, then rested his chin on the heel of his palm studying the form and joinery of the cybernetic arm. It was, in his estimation, a beautifully crafted piece, sturdy enough to hold up to the abuse Shiro put it through and carefully weighted so as not to throw off his balance or posture. “Or does it?”

“It’s a weapon,” Shiro replied simply, “and it should be treated with the same respect.”

He thought about that as he ate. “It’s a hand, Shiro. Maybe my hand doesn’t do all the fancy things yours does, like turn into a blade that cuts through flesh on a subatomic level generating some kind of weird fusion reaction that, I think, powers it? Is that right? I’m probably over-analyzing, I don’t know. Hunk would. I should leave the p-chem to him. Or,” he shoved another fistful of fries into his mouth, chewing and talking, “and this is pure speculation on my part, it’s powered by quintessence.”

The lions had remained calm since they’d chastised him for his previous actions. Like petulant children, they never seemed to learn. Well, they’d called his bluff only to realize he hadn’t been bluffing. Keith had expected the Black one at least to comment, but he heard nothing but blissful quietude and his own stream of consciousness knocking around between his ears.

Shiro said nothing but reached across the table for a fry. Keith swatted him away.

“Get your own.”

“This is your second plate, and a third is coming.”

“I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

“You ate three and a half McDonald’s burgers for lunch.” Making another grab for a fry, this time Shiro won. He popped it in his mouth. “I’ll buy you more.”

“I wanted that one,” Keith griped with no other comment to offer.

“Too bad. If you want it back, you have to come get it.”

“I’ll pass.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, and I’m not going to make some ridiculous speech about how I want you to understand that I’m here for you. Those things always make me uncomfortable and never sound particularly sincere. Besides, you know all that already. I just,” Shiro hesitated, “I want you to talk to me, I know it’s not rainbows and roses in there, and I know I’m no prince charming. I- I guess I wish you trusted me.”

About to take another bite, Keith instead set the burger down and wiped off his hands. “You know, three people explicitly know I hear voices, voices that we have been told belong to living machines from the other side of the Laniakea Supercluster. We’re not even talking our galaxy here. One of them is you, and one of them is me. You could argue that I didn’t have control over sharing that with you initially, but the reality is I knew there was a chance it would come out. There’s always that risk.” Over the past several hours, he had come to understand that he was inextricably tied to the lions and their use. Whether he ever spoke to Allura again was one thing. The lions, on the other hand, had been with him all his life. Piloting one now was practically inevitable. He stared at his plate, fixed on the last bite of his demolished burger while thinking about how it had all come out. “The stars were so inviting. You… well,” he spread his hands wide across the wreckage of their feast, no, his feast. “Here we are.” Keith squeezed a perfectly round dollop of ketchup out of the bottle and dipped a fry in it, stirring it around his plate.

Back at square one. Denny’s diner. Wash, rinse, repeat.

When Shiro didn’t reply, he added, “Of course I trust you. As a general rule, I don’t trust people. They let you down, they lie and cheat and take advantage of every inch you give, but for some reason I can’t quite put a finger on, I trust you. I’ve stopped trying to understand. The why doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Yes, it does. Why can’t you talk to me?”

“I could ask you the same?” Keith raised his eyes to Shiro, giving up on the ketchup-coated fry. He tucked a lock of shower-damp hair behind his ear and absently rotated an earring, waiting.

“Okay.” Shiro set his fork down. “I get the same prescription from two different pharmacies.”

“I know.”

“How-”

Keith held up a hand, shaking his head. “When you spend enough time with someone, you notice things. How often have I been in your medicine cabinet looking for toothpaste or dental floss or the condoms you insist on keeping under the sink tucked away at the very back like an embarrassed teenager hiding his shame from his mommy?”

Shiro ignored the jab. “It helps.”

“You don’t want that dependency.” If Shiro called him out on his smoking habit, he didn’t have a defense.

“It’s gotten worse.”

“I wonder if it’s because of the lions. They’re trying so hard to reach you.” Keith shoved the last bit of burger into his mouth, hoping his next dinner would arrive soon. Major injuries did this to him, leaving a lingering hunger at the back of every action and reaction until his body rebuilt itself and repaired the damage. He’d always healed fast, but expected to grow out of it once his metabolism slowed down. The problem was, it never had. So long as he stayed healthy, his appetite remained manageable, or even haphazard depending on what he’d been doing and how much energy he’d spent. This, however, was a nuisance. 

Shiro nodded slowly. “Are they still talking to you?”

Keith noted the diversion but saved the thought for later and shook his head, “Right now, no; they’ve stopped. Blue was mad at me for not delivering up Lance to her. She sensed him when he touched Black’s barrier. They’re all connected in little ways, so it’s kind of strange that the red one is AWOL. Black is moping and wants you to come back to her. Green and Yellow aren’t so clear. They’re there though. I think Yellow was talking to my cat. The cat,” he corrected. “I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not. Don’t say that.” Shiro picked at his eggs.

“I should have realized this would happen. I’m the one they’re using, for whatever reason. Not Allura. I’m pretty sure Allura can’t hear them, at least not the same way I can. I think,” Keith paused. He had not planned to speak more about it, but Shiro was asking for trust and if he expected it in return, he had to give a little on faith. “I think I upset them because I’m not afraid to do it. I don’t have a family, there aren’t a whole lot of people who’d miss me. I’m not afraid die. When you die, you’re dead. Your corpse rots and feeds new life. Dust to dust. You’re here and gone in an instant. Done.”

“I’d miss you.”

Keith held his eager gaze, internally parsing the simple phrase, breaking it down into its component parts, “I” subject pronoun, “would” verb auxiliary, “miss” main verb, “you” object noun phrase. He turned it around and owned it, “Shiro would miss me.” “I’d miss you, too,” wasn’t really an option given the finality of the scenario, but he understood the implication to extend there. To clarify, “I would miss you if you were gone.”

He nodded, licking his fingers one at a time, “But I wasn’t exercising good judgment, you know?” It sounded so sterile, removed from it like this. “And then you showed up when all I could do was lie crying on the floor with the cat feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t tame a few flighty lions.”

“You know, I…” Shiro trailed off as Joy approached with a slab of seared sirloin she exchanged for Keith’s empty plate.

“Okay, darlin’, now you’d better eat all of that. We’re taking bets back there, and so far you’ve earned me two extra cuts of the tip share. What’s with you boys anyway? I haven’t seen either of you for almost a month and a half. When you do show up, it’s at the beginning of my shift instead of the end, and this one,” she patted Keith’s back, studying him carefully as she adjusted her familiar cat-eye glasses before shifting her gaze to Shiro, “can’t stop eating. Everything okay?”

Keith hummed, gulping down half his iced tea and nodding.

“All right,” she said, skeptically. “You boys need anything else? Doll?” She waited for Shiro, lost in his hashbrowns.

“Oh. No, thank you.”

“Yes, actually,” Keith corrected. “He’d like some fries.”

As soon as she’d gone, Shiro leaned forward across the table, flushed red in the cheeks. “ I need to start watching my figure. I’m getting,” he pressed his lips together and looked longingly at his half-eaten platter of All-American Slam, “fat.”

Keith schooled his features to placid blankness to keep from busting his gut and Shiro’s confidence on a hearty laugh. “You are not getting fat. If you’re really concerned, let’s start running again. You didn’t look like you wanted to lay down for eternity or expire in a dark corner last time, but it’s also been two weeks and I doubt you’ve gone without me. Please eat the rest of your dinner. I know you want to.”

Sighing at his meal, Shiro shoveled a forkful into his mouth, savoring the experience with eyes closed. He swallowed before speaking. “You’re so lucky to be able to eat whatever you want.”

Keith froze. “You’re not comparing yourself to me, are you? I’m about half your size and built completely differently. For starters, I haven’t grown either up or out since I was nineteen.” He shrugged with his left shoulder and put his feet up against Shiro’s bench under the table. “I bet you’re one of those guys who hit that weird second growth spurt in his early twenties and never got over getting all nice and thick.” He grinned, clicking his tongue, hoping the gesture would lighten the mood. “I think you’re pretty hot, even if you barely fit in my hands.” 

Shiro shifted so that Keith’s ankles pressed against his thighs and ate some more of his breakfast-for-dinner. “You know it’s funny because when I met you, I didn’t think you were my type at all.”

“No way.” Keith feigned disbelief. “I can’t imagine why not.” He looked down at his shirt, navy blue and emblazoned with the logo of the USCSS Nostromo complete with the colored rainbow from the mission patch. “Anyway, I was thinking.”

“What?”

“A number of things, actually.  For starters, we should go get that Black Bayard. I want to see inside that lion.”

“We could always take Lance over to Blue,” Shiro suggested.

“True, and we will, but I want to see inside the Black Lion.” It had piqued his interest, if only because of his father and that same lion’s connection to Shiro.

Something buzzed from the other side of the table. Shiro pulled his phone out of his pocket, opening his text messages before sliding it across to Keith.

**Sharpshooter: Hey. Did you find him? I tried calling, but he didn’t pick up.**

**Sharpshooter: I also tried texting, but nothing.**

**Sharpshooter: Shiro?**

**Sharpshooter: …**

It was only the most recent in a long chain of messages from “Sharpshooter,” whom Keith assumed was Lance, although he wasn’t exactly sure how he’d earned that designation. One-handed, Keith started typing.

**This is Keith. We’re eating dinner.**

**Sharpshooter: You okay?**

**Yeah.**

**Thanks for asking.**

**Sharpshooter: Hey, whatever dude.**

**Sharpshooter: That chair you slammed into the wall? Hunk couldn’t get it out, so we decided it’s trapped between realities.**

Keith smiled and shook his head.

**Fourth wall breach.**

Shiro leaned forward to see what Keith was typing.

**We’ll bring your car back tonight.**

**Sharpshooter: Sweet. Thanks.**

**We’re going to get the fifth.**

**Sharpshooter: About that. We left all but blue.**

**Why?**

**Sharpshooter: Because according to you, /we/ have both parts.**

Keith stared at it for a long moment, a satisfied smirk in the set of his lips. That vote of confidence wasn’t something he’d expected from Lance, but he’d take it, along with the implications of leaving Green, Yellow, and Red with Allura. About to slide the phone back to its owner, Keith was stopped by another incoming message.

**Pidge: Go get it. We’re going to figure this out here. I want to know more before going all in. Still need to find out who was after Hunk and if he was the intended target. Keep us posted.**

We will.

**Pidge: Re: Ch 4 You were right. Monitoring for signal change/shift. Will keep you posted.**

Shiro placed his finger at the top of the screen and slowly took the phone away, reading through the messages before typing his own replies and pocketing it again. “So, we’re going to retrieve the Black Bayard.”

“Yes.” Keith lifted his chin and lowered it once, slowly. “That’s one of the things we’re going to do.”

“What else?”

“We’re going to make a deal. It’ll be like a game, and it won’t start until we head out, so you’ve got some time to decide if you want to agree to the terms or not.”

“Okay, tell me what you’re proposing.”

Keith toed off his sneaker and lifted the heel of his foot onto the bench between Shiro’s legs. “Well, you don’t like my habit and I don’t like yours, right?”

Shiro glanced down, amusement passing over his features when he noticed the gray and black novelty socks with flying saucers and shooting stars. He slid forward, leaning over his plate and forking another bite of hash browns. “Well, I guess you could put it that way. I don’t think I asked you to quit, I don’t expect you to.”

“What was it you said, exactly?” Folding his hands on the tabletop, Keith went on, “Usually people go the ‘dirty habit’ route, but I believe you said, and I quote ‘smoking will kill you.’ Now, I don’t actually think it’s going to, for a variety of reasons, however, you don’t like it, so, I suppose I could cut back.” He wriggled his toes and pressed the arch of his foot into Shiro’s groin.

Shiro’s eyebrows twitched and he blinked, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as he did so. “It’s hard, I know that.” Reaching under the table, he grabbed Keith’s ankle, running the ball of his thumb over the joint.

“So, tomorrow you’re going to give me your pills and I’m going to give you my cigarettes.” Keith rubbed his foot over the rise of Shiro’s cock.

He grunted, one knee bouncing under the table. “And?”

Grinning, Keith carved off a bite of meat and speared it with the steak knife, examining it before jerking it off the tip with his teeth. “And that’s it,” he said, before chewing, this time with his mouth closed, and swallowing. “If you want your vice, you have to ask for it and the other person gets to decide if you can have it or not.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fun game.” Undoing the top two buttons of his shirt, Shiro let out his breath and wiped his brow with his napkin.

“You have to make it fun; that’s the point.” Keith pulled his foot away and slipped it back into his shoe, going back to polishing off his steak. He thought he could probably eat one more, but asked for the check instead when Joy returned with the plate of fries.

Shiro stared at it, cheeks ruddy in defeat. “Tease,” he mumbled, stirring his food into an uncharacteristic mess.

“I wasn’t teasing. That was an invitation.” It had been such a strange day. “Finish your meal. Don’t forget to R.S.V.P. You’re welcome.”

 

+++

 

Keith hadn’t slept since Shiro woke up in the middle of the night screaming his name. His eyes snapped open to Shiro stiff-backed and upright, eyes half-lidded and shivering despite the hot perspiration prickling through his fade. Easing him down again, Keith stroked his hair, struggling to calm the percussive railing of his heart.

“Don’t leave me,” Shiro whispered as he succumbed again to sleep.

_ Don’t say things like that. _

With Shiro’s head on his chest, he watched the sky through the windows, occasional arcing bolts of lightning cracked from above, though strangely clear. Through the passage of several hours he allowed himself to be used as a body pillow, lulled by the regular rise and fall of Shiro’s ribcage and the rhythmic vibrations of his snores. By five am, Keith couldn’t stand it any longer. He made Shiro get up while he fixed breakfast with the remainder of the eggs and bacon in his fridge, supplemented by leftover experimental meals and some chemically formulated flavor of General Foods International Coffee designed to make one reminisce about high school prom and old beaus named Jean-Luc.

After cleaning up, Keith jammed his feet into his sneakers, tugging them over his heels without unlacing them.

“Why does most of your athletic wear look like it was made in 1984?”

“It probably was.” Keith looked down at the fitted tank clinging to his stomach. He did not have to turn around to check that the little red shorts he always wore running barely covered his ass. Except for his running shoes and underwear, everything Keith presently wore had been procured at a second-hand shop in town. The thrift shop proudly sported an establishment date of 1952 on its door, yet the warehouse of wonders held other people’s treasures from decades even earlier than that. Keith’s sole requirement was that the clothes he purchased survived the wash. “Are you saying you don’t like seeing this much of my thighs?” He pursed his lips, drawing them to one side of his face, making a show of examining his legs. Finding nothing amiss, he crossed his arms and waited.

It took Shiro a moment to realize he was being played with and recover himself, the color drained from his face. “O-of course not!” he stammered.

“Then let’s go!” Grabbing Shiro by the wrist, Keith practically dragged him out the door, the cat at their heels nearly the entire run. Keith made Shiro go the full seven miles.

Stamina wasn’t an issue once he’d re-learned how to breathe. It only made Keith wonder what kind of shape he’d been in during his time off-planet. Gladiatorial arena. Shiro would tell him eventually. Probably.

The only drawback was that they couldn’t both fit in the Airstream’s small shower at the same time. He let Shiro have it and took a sponge bath from the sink. To do otherwise was a waste of water anyway.

Packing was simple and he left out two heaping bowls of kibble for the cat, just in case. Lance had purchased cat food and ever since, Red had taken a sick pleasure in scrowling at Keith to feed her whenever he was around. She certainly enjoyed spending more time inside now that the comfort level had been improved. At least that was what he told himself, but since acquiring the cat, who had come with the campsite, she’d always preferred to sleep near him.

He double checked the contents of his truck before they left, making sure he had everything he could think they might need in case something broke down, unlikely, or they just wanted to spend a night or two outdoors. He’d put some effort into cleaning it out after losing track of his favorite plaid shirt for several days before remembering he’d left it in Shiro’s laundry closet.

They drove back to Shiro’s place through the rise of the sun from behind the distant plateaus, swaths of color bleeding over the stark expanse.

Keith’s secret was out. He loved road trips.

“We’re going to be gone for at least a week.” Keith leaned against the doorframe to Shiro’s room, he thrust his finger into his mouth and chewed at the hangnail that had been bothering him for the last several minutes. Shiro continued to take his precious time deciding what to bring.

“Yes, but how many days, exactly? Are we talking a business week or a calendar week?”

Keith wandered into the bathroom and checked the drawer Shiro had cleared out for him. He’d misplaced his cigarette case sometime over the past several days. Not there. The only thing in the drawer was a toothbrush and dental floss. He closed it and went to check the kitchen. “I don’t know, how about a calendar week? It takes two days to drive, unless you want to spend eleven hours in the car and not do anything fun for an entire day there and back.”

“What’s there to do anyway?”

“Plenty of things,” Keith replied. “We’re driving through Arizona. Meteor Crater, Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Williams, Grand Canyon, all those are close enough to 40. If nothing else, we’re stopping at a knife depot.”

“Why?”

“Because I need a sheath for this damned thing.” He pulled the dagger out of his belt and looked at it. He also needed to do something about the glowing sigil.

“Oh…”

“Or I can just leave it in the truck.” That was probably the better option and it would discourage him from carrying it around in public, despite the fact its usefulness outweighed the impracticality. Shiro could continue to dislike it all he wanted. If daggers came in models equivalent to cars, this was the Lamborghini of blades. Perfectly balanced, it held an edge, and the solid craftsmanship showed.

“Should I bring something nice to wear?” Shiro asked, rummaging through his closet.

“No.” The limitations of Keith’s wardrobe had been stressed before. Over-laundered t-shirts, a suit, a uniform, and some plain, button-down shirts from that terrible serving job he planned never to return to.

A loud crash came from the bedroom followed by a soft “Oof.”

Kuro scurried out of the room and skidded across the linoleum past Keith’s feet to bound toward the door and reach up to the doorknob, meowing loudly for attention.

“You okay in there?” Keith yelled back, ignoring the cat and spotting his cigarette case on the counter next to the stove with the key for his bike. That could stay, but he pocketed the missing smokes.

“Let him out.” Shiro emerged, rubbing his head and slinging a nylon duffle bag over his shoulder. “I just texted Matt, he’ll come look after Kuro.”

Keith shoved his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans and assessed the look. Still in his running shoes, Shiro had changed into slim joggers, perhaps just a little too tight and a plain black shirt that stretched over his gut in addition to his massive pecs. He’d stuffed a gray and black all-weather jacket through the handles of his bag. “Ready?” He asked, but he’d caught the irresolution in Shiro’s stance, the tense way he tried to suck in his stomach but not at the same time, the half-realized, self-conscious smile and the soft wrinkle between his brows. He also hadn’t done a thing with his hair and if that wasn’t telltale, Keith didn’t know what was. They had to get on the road.

Shiro nodded.

Keith stopped at the door and held out his hand. Shiro reached out for it, but he pulled away. “No. I told you we’re playing a game.” Keith emptied his pockets and produced the case and two crushed packs of Camels.

While he hadn’t exactly said yes, he hadn’t said no either. Shiro decided to comply, putting his bag down and extracting his two prescription bottles for the exchange.

Taking them, Keith said, “You don’t want to go to rehab, and you know Allura will do her best to put you there if you can’t do this one on your own.”

“I can do it.”

“I know. I’m just not convinced you want to.”

 

+++

 

Mistake number one was letting Shiro pick the snacks.

Mistake number two was not getting his nicotine fix before relinquishing his hoard to the stone-faced warden sitting next to him.

So there he was, strapped in behind the steering wheel with a bag of kale chips, protein bars, and some vile flavor of Vitamin Water on the bench between them. On the other side of the food deficit, Shiro struggled to find a comfortable position. If he slouched, his knees hit the glove compartment. The bench didn’t provide much in the way of back support. After several attempts, he finally gave up and tossed everything back to the jump seats that they didn’t immediately need and laid down, knees up and head on Keith’s lap.

They weren’t even out of Nevada.

“What’s the Bayard doing in Roswell anyway?” Shiro asked, looking up at Keith and fidgeting with the drawstring on his waistband. “I thought you lived in California?”

“We did. My dad was transferred to Edwards after I was born. We’re from New Mexico.”

The last thing Keith wanted to do was think about his father, but he’d known it was inevitable. That was the purpose of this trip after all.

“Was it just the two of you?”

The question sounded innocent enough. “Yep, just us.”

“What about your mom?”

“Never met her.” Keith drove. What else could he say? He didn’t know anything about her, had never even seen a single picture of her, and for all he knew, she didn’t even exist. “I was told she left us.” It made him glad he was too young remember.

If that were true, then the point, as he saw it, was that even after his dad was too sick to care for him, she hadn’t come back.

“Anyway, my dad never sold his land. Before I went to basic training, I packed up everything in the house and put it in storage if it looked worth keeping. I got the deed when I turned 18.” Keith shrugged. 

“Where’s your dad now?”

“In a home.”

“No, but I mean, where.”

“Roswell…”

“Do you want to see him?”

“Not particularly, no,” Keith replied without missing a beat, tactless and straightforward.

“When was the last time you did? Would he know you?”

“I don’t remember, and probably. Anything else?”

Shiro hummed. He didn’t have to speak the next question for Keith to follow to the logical conclusion, and it lingered still after several very long minutes.

“We’ll see.” Keith finally said, considering but unwilling to commit. “It’s been a long time.”

The engine’s droning purr and radio static marked their passage as they traversed the ribbon of asphalt through the mountain terrain, leaving Keith to his thoughts. His knee bounced against the rim of the steering wheel in pensive contemplation. Why had Allura let it happen? She was an orphan herself, what part of her had decided it was okay to do that to someone else. He’d only been a child. “How could she not have known?” he blurted out, fist crashing into the top of the dash. “If he showed up and she didn’t sense that same energy she claims to be innately attuned to, then why didn’t she put a stop to it?”

Shiro unbuckled his safety belt and tucked one foot beneath him, sliding across the bench. He brushed Keith’s hair away from his face, fingering the angular lines of his jaw and the soft, smooth skin of his throat. “Desperation?”

Keith leaned into the touch.

“Try to see it from Allura’s perspective, I know it’s hard. People cling to anything when they’re up against everything. I know that much from experience. She needed it to work. Maybe-”

“Whose side are you on?” He snapped his head away, hair whipping across Shiro’s face.

Whether her tears had been sincere or those of the crocodile, Allura had done so much for Shiro. She’d given him a job for one. It came with stability and a new means to self-sufficiency while he recovered. He was still recovering. Yet she had also admitted to collecting the people she wanted to pilot the lions. Her lions? Though, as far as Keith understood it, no one could really own those lions.

“You know quite well whose side I’m on.” Shiro leaned back and stretched his arms, cracking his shoulders and then his neck.

Shiro was here, with him. That was more than enough confirmation. “She knew what she was doing. She knows what she’s doing. She hardly explained anything she didn’t immediately make more convoluted, like what happened to the pilots of the lions when they went through the wormhole to our galaxy? Why doesn’t she know where any of the lions are other than Black? At least, I’m positive she doesn’t know Blue is practically next door.”

What else was she involved in? Where else had she dabbled, dipped her fingertips in to nudge and feed the ripples of something greater than herself?

“Who knows.” Shiro pressed his knees up into the dash, “but she could have at least warned you about that radio transmission.”

“If she knew about it.”

“Assuming she did, though. If no one knows who the paladins are, including the paladins, then how can they possibly be in danger?”

“That doesn’t make sense. Despite what I said to her about having to find someone else to pilot the Red Lion, I’m not sure anyone else can. I bet the Galra know Allura’s here. She said she was a fugitive, fine, but she implied that she fought for the Black Lion. They’ve got to know where it is. My guess is that the Galra have the Red Lion, but know nothing about the locations of Blue, Yellow, and Green. If they had all four, they’d come for Black, but where she is, she’s safe.” 

“I agree with you. I bet they can’t operate the Red Lion.”

“Right now, no one can operate any lion.” He mechanically tapped the side of the steering wheel with his nails, thinking.

Reaching over, Shiro clamped his palm down over Keith’s hand. He rummaged around in his bag, emerging with one of the crushed cigarette packs. Flipping it open, he held it out for Keith before taking one himself and offering a light. “These are stale.”

“When did you become a connoisseur?” Keith grumbled.

“When I decided you were worth suffering your worst habits.”

He wouldn’t begrudge that. Besides, Shiro was right.

Shiro slept as they passed through the wastrel opulence of Boulder, the unexpected oasis of Lake Mead, and the looming expanse of the Hoover Dam, whose look and feel in grimdark modernist Stalin seemed, to Keith, a foolhardy display of human self-aggrandizement. He found himself wondering at which point the river would break loose, unrestrained once again in its path, carving its course from Colorado all the way to the Gulf of California. The ancient river remained ever ardent and untamed, as free as the wild fluttering of his heart when he looked at the man whose head rested beside him.

_ Get a grip. _

Keith pushed the drive through to their destination, forcing Shiro to handle part of it in the middle to rest his aching shoulder. The wound continued to heal fast, as did the fine pink line of a scar from a cut deep into the muscle tissue of his forearm that he didn’t remember. Shiro had told him he’d done it to himself, but that seemed unnecessarily self-destructive. Why would he do that unless to prove a point, and what point was made by cutting himself? He didn’t recall much of what happened after the explosion had sent him eating literal dirt. He’d just been grateful they made it out; Hunk was going to be all right, and that was what mattered.

Red was the only one who had ever connected with him so intimately through pictures, touch, and smell. As he was now well-aware, she could be a conduit for the other lions, patching them through to him because he was the only one apparently listening. Where had she gone and why? What was she trying to avoid? It was strange thinking of them as mechanical beings because they were very much alive and until recently, he’d only ever known them as undefined ephemera. The lions still left him in peace, but ever since trying to disconnect, to wash out their resonance with threats and household solvents, when they did speak, the strains of their speech grew amplified. Instead of resolving his problem, he’d only managed to make it worse. He’d lost so much control for those brief minutes. The implication terrified him. At what point would it control him completely? Did it already?

Roswell made the short list of Keith’s least favorite places in the USA, not that he’d ever ventured very far outside the continental southwest. Thick, stale air hung low over dry and dusty streets, too many small shops celebrating the alleged 1947 UFO crash lined the main drag with second-rate murals in various states of degradation depicting spindly gray creatures with polished black almond eyes and spacecraft in a profile that distinctly reminded him of fried eggs over easy.

_ Fucking aliens. _

Everything was aliens.

They spent the night at a chintzy motel resembling a whitewashed witness protection facility, and in the morning tackled the problem of the Bayard.

The storage unit was about the size of a small one-car garage with scrub growing from cracks in the slab concrete floor and a few holes in the roll-up door that were likely from a .22 caliber rifle. A target had been stapled to a nearby signpost. Judging from the hits, whoever had been practicing was a terrible shot. Probably drunk or high. Spiders and vermin seeking shelter for the season scuttled away from the light as Shiro took over the job of raising the door and Keith pulled the chain to the crackle and hiss of a dim 30-watt bulb that flickered to life above them. Hills grew to mountains, a mecha of junk from the ground nearly all the way to the ceiling. It’s spine snaked the perimeter of the room.

Hands on his hips, Keith surveyed his kingdom. “I should just get rid of this shit. I don’t even know why I’ve kept it.”

“Because there’s a part of you that can’t let go of the idea your father might someday be well again?” Shiro offered, glancing at Keith, mouth open ready to rebut. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe in hope because you’d be lying.”

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just find this thing.”

Keith shimmied along the side of the unit, climbing boxes toward the back. “I’m pretty sure it’s over here somewhere.”  Some of his belongings were boxed toward the front, but most of the contents had come from his father’s tiny house about two hours northwest of where they were now.

Shiro called up to him, “Whoa, Keith?”

“Yes?” he asked, listening to the scuffling behind him

“Is this a Corvette?”

The covered thing at the bottom of the pile was, in fact, a car. “Yes. Dad’s car. 1971.” Despite the piles and boxes strewn across it, he carefully avoided adding his weight to Fiberglass body to go through the boxes one at a time. He found himself wishing he’d bothered to label them. At least he’d know what had come from where when a portion of the things were his. It was going to be a long morning.

“How much work do you think it needs to run?”

Keith smiled to himself. “I didn’t know you had any interest in cars. A lot, probably. It’s been rotting in here for too long.”

By midday, they’d made scant progress, though he’d managed to uncover an Atari 2600 with a box full of games and the 360 degree dial controllers for Indy 500, a water pipe with some crusted organic sludge adhered to the interior, his own missing flight jacket, a WWII Hamilton wristwatch that still wound properly, and a pair of RayBan aviators.

“What did you find?” he asked, setting down the box of found treasures as Shiro poured over a stack of hardbound books.

Shiro held up his find, a battered yearbook from 2004, then flipped it around, pointing to one image on the page of senior portraits. “This is pure gold.”

Studying the page, Keith cringed. Although far from vacant, his expression managed to bespeak boredom through an intensely hard gaze. He had only removed his nose ring because he’d intended to use the pictures with his university applications. Parted on the side and blunt cut just below his shoulders, his thick hair framed his face. Several months later, he had joined the Air Force and that meant military code. His hair hadn’t looked even remotely decent since. “I could have done a better job of choosing a quote. That one’s pretty lame.”

“‘Nobody tells me how to fly... nobody.’ Yeah. That’s pretty bad.”

“It was supposed to be a metaphor.”

“You’ve written books. You could do better than that,” Shiro chided.

“Have you read my books? I never claimed to be good at it.” He turned his attention back to his box, wondering if he should hide the bong or just put it back. Lance and Pidge would most likely appreciate it. Hunk would probably side with Shiro, and he knew exactly where Shiro stood. Without risking his contract, pot was out of the equation, but he knew a good place in town for flavored tobacco-

A hand fell lightly on his back, so warm the sticky sweat seeped through his shirt.

“I’m guessing it’s not in there, right?”

Keith shut the flaps and turned to him. “Nope.”

Standing, Shiro cracked his shoulders and stretched his arms. “How about I go check? It’s supposed to be my bayard, right? If I find it in half an hour or less, I want my meds.”

“Deal.”

The bong went in the trash as soon as Shiro turned his back, but the smell still permeated the box. He tapped his foot, wondering how long he’d have to wait for a smoke.

 

+++

 

Shiro hefted the Bayard in his grip and turned it over. Heavier than it looked, it balanced in his hand, yet he wondered how it worked, or what sort of magic there was to making it a weapon. He supposed he could bludgeon someone with it if he absolutely had to. He’d found it almost immediately, inside the Corvette, shoved into the small storage space behind the seats, buried beneath some grungy racing snapbacks, one with the wings of Hermes stitched to the sides, and a moth-eaten military issue wool blanket. The Bayard had probably fallen out of a box. A different Shiro, one less tired and definitely younger might have proudly declared that it “called to him.” The reality was that he had just wanted to sit inside the cool car. “We don’t have to visit your dad. I just thought it might be nice. While you’re here, you know?”

“You said you wanted to meet him,” Keith’s voice remained carefully level, staring straight ahead as he parked the truck.

“Yes, but you’re acting upset about it. We really don’t have to.” He hoped the Black Lion would start talking again. He’d tried so hard to cut back so that he could hear her again. Keith had done remarkably well with his end of the bargain, but he’d been inexhaustibly grumpy. Shiro only hoped he wasn’t likewise perceived as such

“I’m trying not to be, but can you just stop? We’re going to go in, meet him, leave, and not talk about it.”

Shiro recognized the disconnect, making the conscious decision to hold his tongue. He prided himself on his ability to de-escalate, though at the moment, he had only succeeded in setting Keith on edge for a visit to the home he did not want to make.

After signing in, one of the residential aides walked them up to a small apartment on the second floor and knocked on the door before unlocking it and letting them in.

Inside, gazing out the single small, dingy window, an old man sat strapped in his wheelchair. Fingers knotted with arthritis and ropey veins worked mechanically, rolling and unrolling the edge of the blanket pulled up over his legs and feet. His down-white hair hung straight and limp against his head, fine and thin, wholly unlike his son’s.

Akira turned his head toward the door, bright light glinted from black sapphire eyes that widened as recognition dawned. “Well, look who showed up.” He spoke in Japanese.

“English.” Keith frowned.

“Karen,” the old man roared, calling for the nurse as he maneuvered his chair to face them. “Who let this asshole in here?” he asked, comfortably swapping languages.

“He came to see you-” the nurse said in a calming voice. 

“Asshole?” Keith asked, rubbing his eyes and blinking, brow furrowed.

“Takes one to know one.”

Shiro leaned in, whispering, “That doesn’t even make…” Of course, it didn’t make sense. He had to remind himself that the man with the bib in the wheelchair with the harsh tongue was here for a reason.

“Don’t forget half of my genetic material came directly from your rotten old pizzle.” Keith crossed his arms and shifted his weight, leaning back against the wardrobe.

“More than that, but don’t flatter yourself,” the old man grinned. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, okay, but I’m not the one who drooled all over himself.”

Akira senior looked down at his shirt, grunting with surprise, and attempted to brush it away with a palsied hand as he muttered to himself. “Look at this mess. Goddamned failed fucking genetic experiment now telling me what to do.”

“Your experiment. I would love to know what constitutes failure,” Keith muttered.

Through the open door, Shiro heard the nurses out in the hall.

“What’s going on in there?” someone asked.

“His son showed up,” Karen replied.

“Yeah? I always thought he’d found all those old school photos in a neighbor’s yard sale and he was making it up.”

“Please. He loves that kid. I remember when they brought him in. Being forced to give up his child broke his heart, I just…” her voice trailed off.

“Who’s that?” Old man Kogane shook a crooked finger at Shiro. “I don’t recognize that bastard.”

“Shiro. He insisted on meeting you, so here we are.”

Keith’s father narrowed his eyes to tiny slits as he cautiously eyed Shiro. “You got a lot of meat there boy. What are you doing hanging around my useless progeny? Here I am with these stinking bed sores, and he’s off,” he turned to Keith swapping back to Japanese in a whisper, “What have you been doing anyway, Akira?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What do you mean, ‘Don’t call me that?’” he imitated Keith’s petulant tone, pouting. “I named you Akira. Akira Kogane, Junior. That’s your name. Not Keith.” He rolled his head toward Shiro, “Did you know he liked that ridiculous cartoon with the giant robot so much he insisted everyone call him ‘Keith?’ The kid was only three years old!”

“It’s better than having people mispronounce your name or make fun of it because of the growing cult popularity of a Japanese animated feature, even though it happened to be good.” He leaned in and whispered “Ah-ki-rah” in the old man’s ear.

Akira Senior batted him away. “Pffft! Tell them your old man’s favorite director was Akira Kurosawa. And when are you going to outgrow that face metal? Aren’t you getting a little old for that?”

Keith stepped away, smashing his palms to his face and pulling them down his cheeks as he let out the rumble of a deep breath.

“I-” Shiro started.

“Look, Dad, Cut the crap small talk.” He stabbed his finger sharply Shiro’s direction. “I’m seeing him. That’s why we’re here.”

Akira’s eyes grew wide and he rubbed his chin, “Wow. Okay. I mean, I always knew you were kind of a-“

Keith was practically on him this time, finger pressed into his sternum. “Don’t even start.” The color had leeched from his face, features hard and expression curiously blank. Suddenly, he dropped his hand and turned to Shiro, speaking quietly, “Are you done here? If not, I’ll be outside.” Keith pivoted on his heel and made for the door.

“Keith?” his father called.

Keith stopped and turned around. “Thirty seconds,” he said, looking at his watch, the one Shiro recognized from the box he’d pulled out of storage. “Starting now.”

“Do I,” the man hesitated, his pitch faltering as his arthritic fingers curled into the hem of his blanket. “Do I embarrass you?”

“Yes.” For the third time, Keith stepped aggressively toward his father. Shiro nearly grabbed him before he stopped on his own two strides from the shriveled old man. “And it’s not because you’re here,” He spread his arms and raised his chin to indicate the space, “or because you’re like this,” He let his arms fall to his sides. “It’s because you’re mean and vulgar. You call people names and you’re unpleasant to be around. I’ve heard you’re even gross to the nurses. You act like you don’t like me. That’s fine. I hardly know you. I don’t like spending time with you; I don’t want to be near you, and what makes it even worse is I can’t tell how much of this is just who you are and how much is the sickness.” He turned to leave, but stopped again at the door frame, facing the hall, shoving his hands into his pockets. “We took the Black Bayard by the way. It’s Shiro’s now. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Oh no.” Akira spoke under his breath, “No, no, no. Son!” He tentatively reached out, but Keith was already gone and his fingers closed on Shiro’s arm instead. “Don’t let her hurt my boy.” A film of moisture formed in the old man’s dry eyes. “Don’t let her get her hands on him. She’ll destroy him. She-” He squeezed Shiro’s wrist and then, without warning, pushed up his sleeve, revealing the cool, hard casement of the prosthetic arm. “Who are you, really?”

Shiro wrenched away, he hadn’t meant to let himself be touched like this. He should have left the prosthetic in the truck. Always so careful, he cursed his own stupidity. “I-I’m sorry. I have to go.”

“You know what it is?” the man asked, still holding his gaze.

He glanced over his shoulder, nodding. Akira scowled at him, harsh shadows cast over chiseled features, still strong beneath the shroud of age. He saw the resemblance then, the angular roughness, the hard set determination of his jaw, and the calculated curiosity that in Keith was glossed over by an empathetic nature but here was instead uncovered, almost vulnerable.

Shiro reached out to pat his shoulder and bid him farewell, but he shrank away and yelled for Karen, who rushed to his side.

“I know what you are,” he laughed as Shiro stepped out and jogged down the hall to catch up with Keith.

 

+++

 

The last bus to the visitor’s center had passed hours ago along with the sun beyond the end of the Earth. Keith had driven them to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.

Shiro knew he must have been there before. The last time he’d gone home to visit his family, he’d seen the pictures, sliding out of a worn out album whose adhesive had dried up. Standing next to his brother, they looked together out over the great rift all the way down to the frothy white of the rapids below. Something so vast, empty, and powerful, he should have been able to recall. Someone had cut his father out of every single photograph. Another missing memory.

He imagined his brain was a sieve. Little but the recent past and present was even there. The fact that he was already quite good and getting better at hiding the deficiency didn’t help. How, with so much evidence everywhere around him, could he not remember?

Keith was somehow possessed of enough instinctive savvy to couch personal questions in the present, rarely touching on subjects that involved a broader spectrum of memories. Sometimes Shiro found himself wishing Keith would pry, if only to see if it would clue a spark to something in the emptiness.

After a day of hiking and exploring, Shiro insisted upon carrying his boyfriend, featherlight, legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck, hot breath at his ear or on his shoulder. The worry over Keith’s weight loss remained with no explanation offered to solve the mystery. Shiro had observed him carefully for days but had soon concluded an eating disorder was not involved. He’d had some kind of reaction to the metal when the surgeons had pinned his collarbone back together, swelling, fever. Shiro hadn’t known who else to contact, so he’d put the hospital in touch with the base. In the end, the hospital had flown in hydroxyapatite pins to reset the fracture. If he were to make an educated guess based on observation, Keith was in some sort of regenerative healing mode. His body wanted to heal itself, and it needed fuel to do so, hence the insatiable appetite. Hence the loss of fat reserves and muscle mass.

Fortunately for Shiro’s sanity, the whole process had finally slowed down. If nothing else, maybe Keith would soon go back to three meals a day instead of trying to stuff his face every half hour or so.

In comparison, the last word from Pidge and Lance on Hunk was that he was still spending a considerable amount of time resting.

“I can walk you know.”

Reaching around behind himself, Shiro smacked Keith’s ass, hard, then squeezed. “I know. But I like carrying you, and you haven’t actually told me to put you down.”

“No. I kind of like this take charge, mildly assertive version. I’m interested in seeing where you go with it.”

“‘Mildly assertive,’ huh?”

“Take it with a grain of salt. My perception might be a little warped. Usually, when I’m trying to be assertive, someone ends up telling me to stop being so aggressive.”

By the markers, it was close to two and a half miles back to the truck. Shiro walked them all in the hope he’d burn enough calories to shrink his own solid waistline a little, or at least give it a good start. Healthy eating was nothing short of difficult when his partner only wanted grease and meat, and wanted it all the time.

Returning to the parking lot, he set his charge down gently in the bed of the truck, ignoring the sour expression rewarding him for his effort. “What?” he whined.

Keith lay in languid repose amidst the tide-like whorls of the wool blanket, hips raised just enough for Shiro to tug off his pants, watching with eyes like chips of glinting onyx from the darkness and offering little in the way of assistance. A tight, wry smile drew itself across his lips both knowing and telling.

Shadow and moonlight muted by the small scratched windows of the rusted out cap skimmed the hard lines of his silhouette as he twisted, belly taut, tendons pulling as he pushed his boots and socks off with his toes. Shiro kissed his stomach and licked his sternum, all the way from his solar plexus to the dip between his clavicles, taking his shirt up as he moved and yanking it off over his head.

Palm drifting over Keith’s chest he noticed something he hadn’t before. He pinched the hair between his thumb and forefinger, tugging ever so slightly on it, not expecting the swat that immediately followed. “What’s this?”

“It’s my chest hair. Leave it alone.” Keith demanded in playful consternation.

“What?” Shiro reached for it a second time but was once again batted away. “How come I haven’t seen it before?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you weren’t paying attention.” Keith pressed a hand against it, half laughing as Shiro tried a third time to pluck it. “I said leave it alone. What is wrong with you?”

“Can’t I just pull it out? Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it.” Shiro tried to pry Keith’s hand away, his effort unsuccessful.

“No.”

“Personal grooming, Keith. One chest hair is weird.”

“You have none. I have one. Look, I pluck the hair between my eyebrows and shave my patchy beard. I’m not going for cave dweller here, but there is absolutely no reason-“

“It’s half an inch long!”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Right, because you’ve got this rogue hair growing out in God’s country by your nipple.”

“What did it ever do to you? It’s just minding its own business.”

“Mmmhmm. Sure.”

“I hate to disappoint, but we can’t all be ideal specimens, Shiro.” With that, Keith braced one leg against the side of the truck bed and in one swift movement, grabbed Shiro by the shoulders and flipped him over, back slamming into the foam lining the bottom.

Shiro coughed, the wind returning to his lungs as Keith crept upon him, straddling his chest, the mysterious knife at his throat. He’d almost forgotten about it, sure Keith had left it shoved between the driver-side visor and the roof of the truck the entire day. He had carried Keith around for hours, he’d have surely felt the knife, yet here it was. Whenever Keith wanted it, it was right there.

Keith leaned forward, pressing the flat of the blade into his jugular, legs and elbows locking him down. “Gotcha.”

Instead of the panic he expected, a rushing thrill tingled up his spine and heat settled in his core. “I surrender,” he whispered.

“That’s no fun.” Keith tossed the knife aside, where it hit something in the corner with a thud. “What was that?” Keith turned to the noise, and reached over to grab the Black Bayard. Shiro had stashed it there out of an irrational fear that someone might try to steal it while they explored the park. Griping it the same way he did his knife, Keith appraised the piece in his hand.

“Hey. Keith?”

“Hmm?” He let Shiro wrest it away, but not without a pause of resistance before letting it go. Wistfully, he followed its arc as Shiro tossed it again over to where the knife lay.

“Me,” Shiro commanded.

Lacing his fingers through Shiro’s hair Keith pulled back. Hard.

He gasped. Gripping tight, Keith bent down to kiss him, a passionate release of all the pent-up turmoil of the last several days. They’d suffered so many chaste goodnights and good mornings in two-star motels, one with walls so thin the windchimes hung from the weathervane sang through the night and the woman in the white nightdress wandering at check-in wailed and bemoaned the broken ice maker at 3am. Another place had been a cesspit of someone else’s hair, black mold in the shower, and blood on the bed sheets. Here, it was just them and no one cared. Keith had parked at the end of the farthest lot. Although the list of names scrawled in black marker inside the cap with tick marks beside them caught Shiro slightly off his game, it came as no surprise he wasn’t the first person to have been bedded in the truck.

The thought of being the last sent the heat rising from his groin to his throat, leaving him uncomfortably anxious and wanting, sticky from his pores, the wetness dewing up through his hair.

Keith traced the scar on his face from one cheek to the other before pressing lightly against his larynx, gauging his response, fingertips brushing the underside of his chin. He gasped.

“Please?”

“Not while you’re dressed.” Keith wrenched his shirt off and immediately went for his trousers, unhooking the button. “I want to admire you.” He grinned, kneading his hands in Shiro’s pectorals with a smack of approval before sliding his palms down, squeezing his sides before hooking his fingers in the waistband as he took the zipper between his teeth and pulled.

He’d had his sights set on doing the pampering all day, looking forward to Keith’s inevitable glassy-stare at release, but now he found himself content to be the recipient. Here he’d found a partner who made him feel like he had a choice, with shared control over the outcome.

“I want you.”

“That’s my line.” Keith tugged his pants off, briefs and all, over his erection and crawled back on hands and knees, blowing gently through his teeth on Shiro’s attentive mast.

“In me?” He arched his back, hips raised in amateur presentation, desperate for touch, yet the words had come out a question.

Keith paused, rocking back on his heels as he dragged his fingertips over the network of ridges that marred Shiro’s skin. “Are you sure?” Keith asked, sensing hesitation, gliding hands up the dark passage of his thighs, thumbs pressing into the tendons at his groin.

Shiro nodded.

“Have you done this before?”

Slowly, he nodded again, clenching and hoping that whatever expression his face was making, it didn’t make him look as constipated as he suddenly felt. 

“Because if you’re not being entirely truthful, I’ll know. Your ass will know. And if you’re crawling around tomorrow in hemorrhoidal hell with rectal prolapse, I am not kissing your rosebud and making it better; I’m handing you the keys and you’re driving yourself to urgent care.”

Squirming uncomfortably, Shiro hissed through his teeth, “Your bedroom talk is murder to a man’s libido.”

Keith combed his digits through scant pubic hair, handling the weight of Shiro’s sac like a pair of Baoding balls, massaging each side. He raised a brow in mocking consideration. “All right. I’ll try again. Can your thrust bearing handle the load?”

“Uh huh.” It wasn’t much of an improvement, but Shiro didn’t care and grumbled his acknowledgement, the ache in his cock sharpening with need. He reached for Keith, hoping the teasing would end, wanting to be touched in so many other places, shuddering as the grip around the base of his shaft tightened and he felt soft lips kissing him there, licking his length from root to head, emerging from his foreskin. Filtered light cast highlights across Keith’s face. Through the pall of darkness and long, heavy lashes, Shiro couldn’t tell if his eyes were actually closed or not. He gasped when Keith stroked him, pressed a fingertip up against the back door, and reached out to lock his hand in that veil of long hair.

“Shhhh.” Keith lifted his head suddenly, disengaging as Shiro groaned. He spat out the strands of hair plastered to his cheek, a string of saliva and precum stretching from his chin. He climbed over Shiro, to the front of the pick-up bed, returning with lube.

“Hmm?” he smirked, raising a brow.

Shiro wouldn’t have admitted he’d forgotten, even if he hadn’t been chewing the insides of his cheeks to keep from begging. Hoisting Shiro’s leg over his left shoulder, slick with sweat, Keith settled himself back to his position, still hesitating with the right although the injury looked barely worse than the tracks of an old scar, one fading side of railroad ties. He lowered himself, and got back to work, running his tongue from back to front, mouthing at Shiro’s balls while slowly starting to pump him.

Shiro moaned when Keith finally entered, hot and wet. He grunted as the rhythm of each undulating thrust rubbed against the center of his pleasure. Braced forward, Keith covered Shiro’s mouth with his hand. The heat from their bodies fogged the narrow windows. Shiro bit into his palm to keep from screaming out, all the while listening to the soft, low breath escaping Keith’s lips.

His spoken name hedged a bared tenderness mixed with familiar satisfaction.

“Shiro!”

 

+++

 

“It’s a religious experience. You should try it.” Keith zipped his fly and rocked back on his heels, surveying the landscape as he jammed his hands into his back pockets. 

Shiro swayed, catching his breath as he looked up to the brilliance of diamonds in the satin sea above. Nearly losing his balance, he pressed his toes into the rocky ledge through the soles of his sneakers using Keith’s good shoulder for balance. Standing on the precipice, vertigo crept out from his diaphragm, winding its tendrils around his chest as he leaned ever so slightly forward. With no grounding other than what lay beneath his feet, the emptiness hit just a little too close to home. It no longer mattered which way was up or down. Part of him wanted to let go of the solid earth. The greater part’s acute sense of self-preservation kicked in, and he sat himself down. “Do you know how many people die out here while taking a piss off the rim? No, thanks.”

Still standing, Keith snorted, looking down at him. “Your loss. I promise not to let you fall.”

Shiro shook his head.

Settling beside him, Keith exhaled longingly. “Okay,” he leaned in just long enough to plant a kiss behind Shiro’s ear before resting back on his elbows.

Tilting his head back, Shiro surveyed the night sky. It looked about the same as it had in the desert. “I wonder just how many of these stars are already dead.”

“That’s kind of morbid, Shiro.”

“What if they’re all dead and what’s really in front of us is a galaxy full of black holes distorting space and time, just waiting to suck us in.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Only the most massive stars collapse into black holes. Besides, the center of our galaxy already is one. Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole.”

“That’s me then.” The comparison was almost perfect.

Keith shook his head. “You’re so much more than what you think you’ve lost. I like you for who you are, not what you might have been.” A shadow moved across the moon and the catchlights in Keith’s eyes glistened, gazing at him with a warmth to fight the evening chill.

Shiro had fallen in, desperate to sink to the bottom if it meant he could hide in those depths forever. What was he thinking? He wasn’t. His heart was already mushy potatoes with too much gravy and extra butter. Stars slowly trekked through the heavens above them. Pinpoints of light streaked through constellations baring their burning cores for all the world to see. “I think I’m beginning to understand why you decided to study astrophysics.”

“You do? Why do you think that is?” The questions came as a challenge, and Shiro wasn’t sure if Keith was genuinely curious or poking fun at his presumptions.

He decided to take his chances. “It’s the mystery of the unknown, one of the last great frontiers. We can learn so much about ourselves and our purpose by studying our origin and everything that came before.”

Keith spread his hands out before him across the sky, and spoke in his most serious voice, “The undiscovered country.” He laughed. “When I was in high school, I’d go see my dad every couple months. I guess my social worker thought it would be good for me, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was my sophomore year and I’d gotten into trouble for something stupid,” he sighed. “Okay, I thought it would be fun to see if I could blow up a toilet. If you’ve never done it, by the way, it’s remarkably easy. Got myself a nice fat suspension followed by three weeks of doing absolutely nothing that did not involve attending class and staying in my room. I think the family I was living with asked that I be placed elsewhere because a few months later, I got to move again. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I don’t think I was a bad kid, I just… No, I was pretty terrible. I don’t know. Anyway, somehow my dad got wind of it because the next time I saw him, well. He said I’d never amount to anything, that I was a waste of resources, worthless, and I’m not going to repeat what he called me. I decided right then that I was going to prove him wrong, you know?” Keith blinked, waiting for recognition.

Shiro nodded. “Go on.”

“So I did.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the important part. Everything else is par for the course.”

“I bet he was proud of you for getting into Caltech.” Regardless of behavior, Mr. Kogane left him with the impression that on some level he genuinely cared.

Keith sat up stiffly. “I never told you that’s where I went to school.”

Shiro raised a brow, “You say that like it’s an embarrassment. Your diploma is in a Rubbermaid bin in your closet. Hunk found it when he was rebuilding your bed frame, folded and stuffed behind your headboard.”

“Oh.” Keith paused. “I don’t think the where ever came up. Dad got upset when I told him I was joining the Air Force to pay for it. I guess now I know why.”

Reaching out, Shiro’s fingers brushed the back of his hand, icy cold as usual. He slid his fingers in between Keith’s, interlocked, and squeezed.

“Have you ever just wanted to be normal?”

Slowly, Shiro nodded. He wanted that almost every day.

“You know, most people’s parents aren’t living in a home because they’re-,” he searched for the right word, “incompetent. Most people don’t hear voices in their heads that talk back.”

Shiro nodded again. Aliens hadn’t just stolen a year of his life, his memory, and his hand; they’d taken his history, his loved ones, his friends, everything.

“And even barring all that, I cannot change the fact that I’m...” he pulled his hand away, shaking and clasped both over his stomach, “Well, it is what it is. I’ve always been this way.”

_ What way? _

Shiro almost posed the question, but decided not to press. Instead, he reached into the pocket where he had Keith’s old-fashioned cigarette case. Delicate tracery surrounded a cartouche where instead of a script monogram, the kanji for his name had been engraved. Shiro smiled, amused at how often Keith misplaced things, which was how he always seemed to have an excess of matchbooks and crushed packs.

Keith took it, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this. Smokey the Bear is gonna come hunt me down.” He lit up, inhaled, and blew a cloud of smoke up into the sky. “Want one?” he offered.

Shiro said nothing, gently prying the case back from Keith’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” he choked. It was the first time Shiro had heard him say those words. “I am so, so sorry. I know how this must sound to you.” With a trembling hand he sucked in another deep drag.

“Just get it out.” Shiro’s hand drifted along the hills and valleys of Keith’s torso through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Keith released his breath with a sharp huff through the side of his mouth. “If I’d ever been given a choice, I wouldn’t have chosen my life.”

Climbing over him, Shiro balanced on his knees and hand, forehead to forehead and nose to nose. “Don’t say that,” he shook his head.

“Why not? It’s true,” Keith paused, reaching up to rub his thumb across Shiro’s cheek, eyes locked. “You know we bleed so that the stars have something to shine on?”

Shiro lost Keith on that, the way he sometimes did. There wasn’t any point in asking for explanation. He had probably blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Defeated, Shiro sat down again beside him. Keith let his foot swing over the precipice, away into nothing at the edge of the world.

After a moment, Keith tried again, “I don’t deserve you.”

The revelation in those words unsettled him. In truth, Shiro didn’t think he deserved Keith either, yet the universe used its own rubric for assigning worth, and he wasn’t privy to the criteria.

“Look, Shiro, here’s the thing,” Keith said bluntly, breaking eye contact and tilting his head to fix his sight on a point somewhere far away across the heavens, lips parted pensively in uncharacteristic disquietude. A fat finger of ash grew as his cigarette burned down, the orange glow of the ember the only shift in the stillness of this isolated reality. He swallowed hard before it tumbled out.

Simple, concise.

Exposed.

“You make my heart beat.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was such a weird chapter to write. I’m sorry I hung onto it as long as I did. A lot of real life experiences (weird ones) went into this. I hope it’s cohesive. I’d just like to move on. 
> 
> Here are some things to consider:  
> 1) Don’t make someone drink if they’ve thrown up a poisonous substance. Call Poison Control.  
> 2) Keith has probably seen Gregg Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy” more times than he can count. He also reads Frank Stanford.  
> 3) I wrote the worst simile ever, and I left it there on purpose so you can all have a good laugh. With me or at me, I don’t really care. Every time I even think about it I just about bust a gut.
> 
> I intend to post Chapter 9 before Season 5 drops. If I don’t, hold me to it, because it’s done.


	9. What I Am is What I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Shiro has a strange dream, Hunk gets a present, quintessence is weird, and Shiro's parents extend an invite for a holiday dinner.

_ “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. … In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” _

_ \- Carl Sagan _

 

+++

 

Breaking a dependency was hard. Shiro didn’t have an  _ addiction _ . That wasn’t him. The compulsive _ user _ with uncontrollable cravings casually navigating the meandering paths of a less-than-mundane existence like the golden eagle adhering to its circannual migratory route without cause or care for anything other than its own biological fetters.  _ That _ person was definitely not him. Now Keith, on the other hand, there was a problem. That alone granted him absolution.

_ Right? _

Shiro hadn’t taken his meds for several hours, and now, in a dissociative dream state, temporary psychosis held him hostage. He likened the experience to sleep apnea, the paralysis so acute he couldn’t will his lungs to expand. Air barely trickled into his windpipe. Panic seeded itself within, centered in the hollow of his stomach and slowly building up through his diaphragm and down to his groin where it grew to surmounting agony with each rhythmic beat of his heart. Blood pumped, coursing through the ropey veins in his neck, his arms, hand, his cock, down the insides of his thighs all the way to his feet. If only he could breathe.

_ Breathe. _

The whisper resonated through every fiber of his being. At once he could move again, regaining full command of his limbs. His fingers grappled at talons that did not exist. Unable to wrestle free, he gave himself up, succumbing to the inevitable end. His vision clouded; the world disappeared into a miasma of haze dotted with motes of fine sparks that flashed and died and flashed again, floating through the air like dust with the razor-sharp impulse of a static charge.

Then it was gone.

Total darkness enveloped him, suspended within the ebb and flow of its warm caress. Slowly, a crack emerged in the infrastructure, small at first with budding light. The fissure grew larger, the rift seemingly endless, extended through him, the glow now radiating from his body. Suddenly supercharged with the essence of life, he was free. Free of the confines of his organic form, and yet he asked himself, “What now?”

The gentle sway gave way to a violent pitch. Explosions and rumbles from above reverberated below. It rattled the walls, and ceiling tiles collapsed, falling like dominoes from above. A green CRT screen relayed to him the world outside, an encore presentation of meteors crashing to the Earth, showering dust and rock in sprays like coronets. Terror. Apocalypse. Those words meant something. He just couldn’t-

_ “Systems failure in 5-4-” _

The stagnant voice of the AI echoing her dull nuance through the tunnels and chambers of the underground facility seemed as familiar as the girl in his phone. People ran, alarms blared. He pulled himself up, though pull might have been the wrong word to use for an incorporeal being that existed within a few fragments of dust, space rheum that blinked in and out through breaches in the cosmic matrix. There, and then suddenly not like the wink of a supernova.

“The  _ very long _ wink of a supernova.” He heard it, a tired refrain in Keith’s chiding voice without further comment. It came from within if he had a mind and that mind had an eye, or a space to hold things such as thoughts and memories-

Was this a memory or a dream?

_ Don’t even start. Cogitation got you here in the first place. _

_ “2-1-” _

And out.

That was when he heard it, a plaintive cry of something left behind.

Abandoned.

Scared.

A dim, yellow lamp illuminated the incubator across the room. Not an audible cry, but a sense that resounded through the recycled, filtered air and cut sharply into the dense glass that housed it.

He wafted over to it, a tiny thing, as minuscule as himself, made up of cellular clusters floating freely in a viscous slurry. That it had consciousness drove him curiously closer, and when he pressed his particles and soft tendrils up against the wall of its prison, it slammed its amorphous form against his from the other side, pulsating. Their cores throbbed together in ebullient synchronization. A part of him hadn’t realized how so very lonely he had been.

The vitality took his breath away.

That was the only way Shiro knew to describe it; it was, after all, a dream. A dream from another long and restless night, of memories indiscernible from nightmares and fused amalgamations of shadows and shards.

How  _ had _ he learned to breathe?

Shiro awoke to Keith’s form, nude and chilled, passed out over him, heart slowly pumping against his own, arms twisted and tangled in the stiff, dingy sheets and pillows of the dive motel, breath shallow and hot at his neck. Shiro held him close, squeezing tightly. He smiled to himself, planting a kiss or three at the top of Keith’s head.

None of it kept him from the humiliation of getting down on all threes, several hours later, creaking knees and stiff wrist, to beg for his medication.

Keith, too, while continuing to put up a valiant effort, had hit a wall headlong. His gamut of withdrawal symptoms ranged from antsy tapping to constant snacking to chewing on straws until they became wads of shredded plastic to complaining that his nipples felt like sandpaper thus necessitating immediate lubrication. By mouth. Later that morning, he had pulled into the High Sierra Oasis and asked Shiro, quietly and politely, to buy him a pack that wasn’t stale, handing him a ten. The sour-faced lady at the counter had snorted back her raucous laughter when Shiro had stepped up the register with an armful of “healthy” snack chips with labels declaring them “organic” and “non-GMO” and then requesting the Camel Turkish Golds. She didn’t have them, so Keith would have to make do with Marlboro Reds. Not that Shiro could tell the difference. And what was with that price? He’d had no idea cigarettes cost that much. When he’d finally made it back to the truck, Keith had sprawled across the entire bench, shirtless with one hand down the front of his pants.

_ “Will you sit up so I can climb in?” _

_ “Give me a cigarette or let me suck you off.” _

It occurred to Shiro that part of the problem was right there in that demand. Oral fixation and something about that revelation had Shiro sniggering quietly to himself while Keith ignored him, amused but at the same time saddened that refractory existed. He couldn’t quite manage the marathon. Regardless, the deeper into this hole Keith sank, the more wired he became. Shiro vowed to grab the patch and a bag of nicotine candies from the next drug store they passed if only to mitigate some of the excess energy. The opportunity never arrived. Once they filled up the tank, they stayed on the highway for the long haul home.

“IS THERE LIFE ON MAAAAAAARS!” They sang along with Ziggy Stardust era Bowie as they had with every number on Pidge’s “Odyssey” playlist.

“You know every single song we’ve listened to on this trip.” Shiro stretched, cracking his shoulders and leaning back, deliberately laying his arm along the top of the bench.

“Not every song.” Keith drove with his knee, lighting a cigarette.

Shiro kept count. That was his second in four hours, which was terrible as far as Shiro was concerned. On the other hand, and considering Keith typically had no trouble going through twenty a day, two so far was a measurable improvement. “Close enough.” Shiro lazily combed his fingers through Keith’s hair, gently tugging at the damp curls that sprang away again to his clammy nape, the cold sweat just another symptom of the monkey. “Do you like them all? Is there a song you don’t like?”

Keith glanced at him, lips pressed together in guarded thought before sighing, “Africa.”

“Africa?” Shiro sat up in surprise. “Toto’s Africa?”

“Yeah. I don’t like it.”

Shiro had played the song at least five times over the last day, finally managing to locate the auxiliary cable from the wreckage under the seat and connect his phone to the jack. Keith hadn’t expressed displeasure, had even joined him in each verse every single time. “Africa,” he repeated, bemused.

“I mean, I don’t hate it.” His smoke burned down between his fingers as he navigated his thoughts. “Conceptually, the lyrics are all right, I guess. However, the attempted poetry of Mount Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus above the Serengeti is lost to the poorly timed rhythm of the musical phrase. It’s objectively bad. Have they ever even looked at a topographic map of Africa? At least both features are in Tanzania, but I’m not sure you can actually  _ see _ Kilimanjaro from the Serengeti. Not to mention, most of the lyrics are completely nonsen-”

“Shhhhhh,” Shiro reached over to clap his hand over Keith’s mouth.

Keith dipped his head at the last moment, chewing on his lip and taking his eyes off the sun-bleached asphalt long enough to shoot Shiro a look of pure incredulity.

“See,” Shiro began, smoothing out his shirt and sitting up straight before thumbing his chin and clearing his throat. “I realize you have opinions, and I respect that, but sometimes you’re just wrong. I mean, ‘ _ it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you. There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do _ .’” Loud and tone deaf, Shiro belted the refrain as he eagerly slid across the cracked vinyl, snagging his joggers on a staple poking up through the degrading foam. He crushed Keith sideways to his chest, and the truck swerved onto the shoulder before he realized his mistake and let go again.

“Hey!” Keith huffed and shoved Shiro back. A hint of pink blushed across his cheeks, side-eyeing Shiro before breaking into a grin.

From behind them, a police cruiser’s siren blipped once before passing.

 

+++

 

Keith slid out of the passenger door after Shiro and stretched, leaning back and pulling his elbows behind his head, first the left and then the right. Beside him, Shiro stood in the strip of grass beside the sidewalk and reached for the ground.

They had barely a moment before Pidge bolted from the front door of the row house and ran up the sidewalk toward them, skidding to a stop as she approached. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was thinking we should try to go out to the Bl-” She stared at the unwieldy, box-like, pale yellow vehicle hitched to the back of the truck. “What is that?” she pointed.

Shiro pointedly looked away, scuffing his toe against the concrete and running his hand up the back of his head, further mussing his already disheveled hair.

_ Thanks for the backup. _

“Is that a  _ bus _ ?” Pidge asked.

“Well, yeah, that’s the street name for it. Technically it’s a 1959 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper,” Keith said proudly, staring her dead in the eyes. “It’s for Hunk.”

Pidge made no sound, clamping her jaw shut as she scanned the sun-faded surface of the beast with hawkish scrutiny, reserving judgment for the time being. Lance trotted up, behind her, Hunk in his wake.

“You know,” Keith added, looking around, spotting only Lance’s Civic, parked askew on the street in front of the house, “because his Jeep blew up.”

Hunk stared at it, eyes wide. He’d heard. “Uh, thank you.”

“Yeah sure, no problem.” Keith stood back so they could get a better look, hands stuffed in his back pockets. The Jeep was far from salvageable, but when he’d seen this from the highway, he’d had to have it.

Lance walked around the back, making a full circuit around the vehicles before returning to tug on the rusted side-door handles. They didn’t budge. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

“No,” Shiro answered, “but it would have been much simpler if we had.”

“Several phone calls and a dollar to the DMV. We should have the title in a week. The previous owner died, and it’s been sitting out in the desert for decades. The family doesn’t want it.” Keith shrugged.

“You might need a key for that.” Pidge raised a brow dubiously at Lance, still trying in vain to rattle the door handles open. She lifted her glasses with a finger and scratched the bridge of her nose. “Does it work?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Keith said, “No, but it will.” He reached in front of Lance and brushing him aside, snapped the handle down with a quick twist of his wrist. Flakes of rust gave way, floating like cooling embers to the asphalt as the mechanism popped, and the door swung out toward them.

Hunk groaned, peering inside and covering his nose and mouth with his hands. “What is that smell?”

“Death. Definitely death. Something or someone died in here.” Lance poked his face in, then stepped up inside.

“That’s exactly what I said,” Shiro remarked.

“I might die.” Pidge climbed in after Lance. “Of asphyxiation.” Despite her attempt to sit gingerly on the bench, the rotten foam gave way and particles of dust mushroomed out around her, the motes dancing in the sunlight through the hazy windows before settling. She sneezed, accidentally sucking in her breath and escaped the bus in a fit of coughing.

“Hey!” Lance called back, rummaging through the contents of the van, “You could paint this up like the Mystery Machine, and we’ll be your Scooby Squad.”

“Jinkies!” Pidge sneezed again, wiping her nose on the cuff if her sleeve.

“Ress roo,” Lance replied in his best imitation of the Great Dane.

“So, it needs a little work,” Keith continued, “but it’s bigger than the Jeep, it only cost a dollar, and I was thinking if we replace all the seating, you’d have a really nice pad, like a little honey hideout for you and Shay.”

Lance stiffened.

“Yeah,” Hunk strained. “That’d be... nice.”

“Uh, Hunk?” Keith had missed something. A nuance perhaps, or body language because he hadn’t been paying attention.

Someone’s elbow jabbed at Keith’s side, and he glanced over to see Pidge shaking her head.

What had happened while he and Shiro had been gone? He’d stashed his phone in the glove compartment for days; it was probably dead, but surely Shiro would have heard and brought him up to speed.

“Yeeeeah. Well, she needs a break, at least through the end of the semester, so…”

“Sorry.” Keith frowned, patting Hunk’s shoulder. There was nothing else to say, and it seemed Hunk didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

“Thanks, man. Me too.”

“Look,” Lance added, still scoping out the contents of the bus, “It’s all about appreciation. She doesn’t realize what she’s giving up.”

“It’s not like we actually broke up-”

“ _ Shiro _ spent more time sitting outside your hospital room than she did.” Pidge crossed her arms in emphasis.

“She was studying for finals.” Hunk looked down at his hands, balled up at his sides.

“She came when she could,” Shiro said in an attempt to mollify the obvious sting.

“Well, we would have all been there if someone else hadn’t needed constant supervision.” Lance jumped out, shamelessly staring at Keith.

Why was Lance like this? It took nearly all of Keith’s mental restraint to keep his retort to himself. This wasn’t about him; it was about Hunk.

“You know,” Hunk turned to Keith. “I never did ask. How did you know I was in trouble?”

The words hit with the sickening lurch of an iron weight fallen from several stories up that just barely missed crushing his skull with their revelation. Lance, as was now becoming clear, felt out of the loop, possibly jealous, and probably like Keith didn’t trust him. Did they all feel that way? What about Pidge? Even Shiro had said it.  _ “Why don’t you trust me?”  _ He hesitated, gripping the door frame tightly as he pushed himself back and turning, stepped away from the dilapidated VW. He no longer wondered when his insular little world would come crashing down around him. It was already demolished, but the foundation still stood, made not of principles and things, but of the people he’d chosen to build with.

Chosen might have been the wrong word. Fallen in with seemed more accurate.

What a sham. He shook his head.

“The Red Lion showed me.”

“How long,” Pidge reached out to him, her fingers brushing against his arm. “How long have you known about the lions?”

“A very long time.” Keith held up a hand to quell the questions he sensed brewing. “It’s not something you go around telling people, you know, that you’re crazy, so before anyone says anything, just-” He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “Think about that. I didn’t realize they were  _ anything _ other than voices until I found the Blue Lion in the desert.”

No one broke the anesthetic silence. Keith watched the sky slowly melt from icy blue to gold.

“Wait,” Lance finally said, pushing his way around Hunk to face Keith, curiosity in his furrowed brows. “I thought you and Shiro found it together?”

“Not exactly,” Shiro clarified. “Keith found the lion, and I found Keith.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa I thought you were together!” Lance snapped his head from Keith to Shiro. “You know, doing the- whatever it was the two of you were doing unsupervised in the desert. How did you lose Keith.”

“Lance,” Keith warned. “You aren’t getting a play-by-play of Keith and Shiro’s Hot Desert Date Night.”

Shiro hummed. “Yeah, no.”

Pidge slid her palm down Keith’s arm, lacing her fingers between his and squeezing. “So that’s why you kept putting off talking about the paladins.”

He nodded.

“I was going to suggest we go out to the Blue Lion,” she continued, “but I think we need to go back to Allura first.”

Blood rushed from Keith’s face, all of him suddenly cold. He had no desire to do that. If anything, it should be her coming to him. Even then, there wasn’t anything she could say that could fix the past, and he’d never believed in forgive and forget. Some things shouldn’t be forgiven, and nothing should ever be forgotten.

“No.”

He wasn’t ready but realized he didn’t have a choice in the matter. The warm rush of the lions’ auras filled his mind, though they didn’t speak. They waited and would continue to wait.

 

+++

 

Pidge continued typing one-handed as Allura thrust a cold, sweaty cup into her other. Tearing her eyes away from the screen, she stopped, peeling the soggy napkin off the clear plastic and letting it fall with a splat to the floor. Frowning and narrowing her eyes, she stared up at Allura, adjusting her glasses with a conveniently placed middle finger.

“Frappuccinos are for basic bitches,” she said with disdain. “Lance!” she called over her shoulder.

“Yeah?” From the kitchen, Lance picked up his head and turned toward her.

With a raised brow and devious smirk, she glanced again at Allura, curiously watching their exchange as Lance perked up. “Caramel frap with extra drizzle?”

“For me!?” He practically skipped over to her table, taking the frou-frou beverage from her hand and plucking the paper off the end of the straw, sucked down a loud slurp. “Thanks, Allura!” He held it up as if to toast, winking and flashing his charming grin, waiting for whatever he thought was coming next.

Pidge rolled her eyes and shooed him away, smacking him hard on the ass with a battered softcover copy of Keith’s second book before returning to her typing.

Keith leaned back in the chair, precariously balanced between the two back legs, and his boot heels, watching as he gathered his hair into a ponytail and pulled the mass of it through a red elastic to a sorry bun that immediately fell loose. He tried again. Same deal. His bangs itched his eyes, and the rest of it was beginning to crawl down the back of his shirt. He’d hit  _ that _ stage.

Frustrated, he shot the elastic over the counter where Shiro and Hunk were fixing someone’s meal, pegging Shiro in the chest. He hadn’t actually aimed to hit and shrank back with a groan, letting the chair drop to all fours with a loud crack.

Shiro rubbed at the spot, “Lance!”

“Hmm?” Lance looked up from where he stood, nursing his drink mere feet away.

“Can you not?” Shiro looked down at his task and plucked out the offending elastic. “I have to replate the entire entree.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Lance narrowed his eyes and glanced over at Keith.

Keith caught Lance’s eye and winked.

Slamming his cup onto the bar, he gestured with a wave of one long-fingered hand. “It’s Keith’s stupid ponytail elastic, and he’s all the way over there!”

Shiro looked from Lance to Keith and shrugged, before running his gloved hand through his hair, realizing what he’d just done, and slowly walking away toward the washroom, peeling the no-longer sanitary glove off his hand and chucking it in the trash.

Hunk and Keith laughed.

“Shut up!” Shiro barked from somewhere in the back.

“What?” Keith said, feigning surprise.

“You,” Lance mouthed. Gaze locked to Keith’s, he made a V with his fingers and signaled that he’d be watching.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Exasperated, Lance threw his hands up, sending his drink flying down the length of the counter where Hunk caught it single handed.

Keith smothered his amusement and only noticed Allura standing nearby when she set a beverage on the table between them.

“French roast, black.”

Pidge lifted her head to them, audibly sighing before returning to her work.

“May I?”

Keith checked the time on his watch, then with painful deliberation, arranged his phone, wallet, cigarettes, lighter, and knife along one edge before folding his hands on the table and staring up at her.

Allura took a seat. “We need to talk.”

“That’s what I keep hearing.” He fixed his gaze on the chair still stuck in the wall where he’d thrown it. “You should leave that there. It adds flavor to the ambiance.”

“I’m not running a sports bar, Keith.”

He leaned across the table. Full attention on her as he did so. He thought she looked subtly different, her eyes a little sharper, cheeks a little pinker, and her ears ever so slightly pointed, the tips peeking out from her hair. “Right. What are you running, Allura?”

“Will you please let me try to explain? I wasn’t entirely forthright-”

“Big surprise.”

“Stop it and let me finish. I believe the Galra already know this planet contains enough quintessence to power their fleet for years. I think they found out thirty-six years ago when they came for the Black Lion-”

Keith stood up so fast, his chair skidded across the floor and fell over backward. “You did lie!” He growled, slamming his hands on the table top, daring her to deny it.

“Omission, Keith.”

“A  _ lie _ of omission. You already knew what they’re doing up there, right now.” He pointed toward the ceiling.

“It’s a solid guess-”

“Just shut up.” He picked up his wallet and stuffed it into his pocket before reaching for the rest of his things.

Allura grabbed his wrist, her grip a steel vise as he tried to shake her off. “Keith, please!”

“Let me go.”

She released him immediately.

“Please sit and hear me out.”

Raking his hand through his hair and pulling it back from his face, Keith let out his breath. He picked up his chair and slammed it back down in its place before collapsing into it, folding his arms across his chest indignantly.

“The Galra are going to attempt to reclaim the Black Lion. Coran and I have been listening to their broadcast signals for years. It’s one of the few systems on our ship that is still functional.”

“What, that and your medical scanner?” he spat.

She looked at him strangely, as if trying to figure something out, and smothered a soft hiccuping noise with her sleeve that she found herself unable to contain. The ringing sound of her laughter burst forth like a thousand silver bells. “You know, I was worried about you, but it just occurred to me you’re probably the only one I shouldn’t be worried about.”

“I don’t know why you bother unless you’re just saying that.”

“Responsibility. I have to take responsibility.”

“I can’t tell if you’re lying or telling the truth or trying to manipulate me. Of course, you’re trying to manipulate me; you’re trying to manipulate all of us. What do you think you have on us? Why do you think we’re bound to be compliant-”

“You’re  _ bound _ to the lions, all of you. I don’t have to do anything, and I think you know that.”

He did know. After everything that had happened over the past several weeks, he did not doubt that what the lions wanted they’d eventually get. What he still hadn’t been able to figure out was what exactly their angle was. Asking produced no coherent response, yet he resigned to trust them. They had, no, the red one had, after all, been his first friend.

“I never made you walk through that door. You came looking for Shiro. You carry almost as much quintessence with you as he does. Almost. Coran has none.”

She looked across the room at them both. Coran had taken over seating while Pidge was on break while Shiro continued to struggle with his task. How could Allura tell where quintessence was?

“And your point? I want you to tell me about my dad, why you did it, how you could possibly not have known? Do you think your actions don’t have consequences? Just because you don’t see it immediately doesn’t mean it won’t catch up to you.”

“Mmm. You learned that pretty early on, didn’t you.”

“I’ve learned a lot of things to get by, and some things I’m still learning.”

“Like throwing chairs into walls? Someday you’re going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”

“That was controlled.” Keith had to grip the sides of the table to keep his voice level, despite himself. He resisted admitting she might be right.

“I’d hate to see you when you’re not.”

“Don’t try me. Look, regardless of what I want, I don’t actually have a choice in this. I’ve spent the past several days trying to ignore this and here I am, back in this shithole restaurant,” He tilted his head back and yelled over his shoulder, “No offense, Hunk!”

“Yea-”

Hunk’s reply cut short, interrupted by a loud hiss and a surprised grunt from Shiro, immediately pulling his hand up as blood dripped from the fingertips of his glove. Wincing, he stepped away from the counter.

Keith wished he’d just take a pill, but knew he was determined to ride it out as long as possible.

Hunk held up a hand, nodding his forgiveness. “As long as you don’t badmouth the food.”

Keith returned his attention to Allura, “Why-” he paused, unsure exactly how to word what he wanted to convey. “Why?”

“I could ask the same. But let’s be real with each other, hmm?”

A low rumble escaped as Keith let out his breath, impatient for her to get to the point. Any point.

“Okay,” Allura continued. She reached out and picked up the dagger, the light from the sigil dimmer in her hand than it had been lying on the polished tabletop. With one finger, she traced the design, then hefted the blade. She tried to balance it at the tang, but it clattered to the table. “I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. My father wasn’t there for me either. I know what that’s-”

Leaning forward, Keith swept up the blade, thrusting the tip into the table so hard the wood split like cracking glass from the impact, and the stone sigil shimmered in a brief flash of brilliant aqua light.

Allura flinched, squeezing her eyes tight and turning her face away. Keith could smell her perfume and the cinnamint toothpaste on her anxious breath.

“Do you?” he asked quietly. “Do you really? You had Coran. You at least had  _ someone _ looking out for you, and by your own admission, you were already of age to process and understand. I had one parent, and  _ you _ took him from me. Do you know how hard it is to make friends or maintain decent grades when the system pushes you around like the baggage you are and all the labels you come with only serve to keep you transient? Not many families want to accommodate a juvenile delinquent with a laundry list record and ‘discipline issues.’”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Did I need to?”

Allura shook her head.

“Okay, so now that we’re clear, tell me what happened thirty-whatever years ago.”

“The Galra came to Earth in an attempt to claim the Black Lion. They had the Red Lion.”

Keith’s eyebrows shot up, but he kept his mouth shut, listening.

With a deep breath Allura continued, “They’d picked up the Red Lion not long after we’d tried to escape.”

“How? Don’t the lions have pilots? What happened to the pilots? You said you and Coran made it through but that most of your ship exploded.”

“Correct. My father was the Red Paladin.”

“But wasn’t he on the ship?”

“Also correct. When the lions are assembled, the pilots don’t necessarily have to be inside. They  _ do _ have sentience.”

“So, your father left his lion, but all five of them were assembled into your giant robot man Tron something…” Keith couldn’t remember its name. He thought one of the lions was trying to help, but he turned his attention outward and tried to ignore it.

“Voltron,” Allura supplied.

“Right, thank you. Vol-tron. So for some reason, your father went back to your ship, which I’m going to assume was the main ship of your fleet, and part of it exploded from sustained damage to the hull.”

She hesitated, finally drawing out a long, “Yeeeees.”

“Are you sure?” There’d been too many flaws in her narrative for him to trust she had her story straight.

“Yes,” she affirmed. “So the lions separated and the pilots of the blue, yellow, and green were able to hide their Lions, but without pilots, Red and Black soon ran out of quintessence and fell into gravitational orbit around the Sun.” She clapped her hands together, slowly pulling them apart as a white spark shimmered to life between her palms, pulsing and slowly darkening to golden as she massaged it, growing and molding it with her fingertips until it fit in her hand. She lifted her eyes to Keith, quirking a brow.

_ Two of the pilots left their lions. _

Nodding once in assent, Keith extended a hand. The energy sent a shot of searing heat through his arm, and he switched hands, experiencing the sudden pain again. He swapped the ball of light back and forth acclimating himself to sensation, watching its force swell and diminish in time first with his breath and then with his heart. He tugged at it, gently at first, dipping his fingertips into the light as if it were dough, pulling it out, stretching it like dough between his hands before balling it up again. On a sudden whim, he crushed his hands together, forcing her quintessence into himself. His flesh tingled from the impact, the glittery sheen of the absorption dripping off his hands like the electric sparks of static in a pitchy night.

Allura sucked in her breath, choking on air before recovering herself with a delicate cough, but it was enough. Keith knew what he had done. He’d taken a small piece of her energy and consumed it.

Much like a dying star.

He shuddered.

“So, Black didn’t have a pilot either?” Keith shook out his hands to revive feeling. “Come on. Spit it out. If you want a team, you can’t withhold valuable information. There is no ‘need to know’ here, and I’m not going to agree to anything blindly.”

“Zarkon.” She spoke softly, eyes fixed on her hands, perfectly manicured, lacquered nails and her cheeks gleaming with the freshness of morning dew in the warm, dim glow of the pendant lamps, their light reflecting golden from above.

Keith didn’t like the direction this story was taking. “What are you saying? That doesn’t add up unless-”

“Father and Zarkon were once friends. Good friends, before the war. I don’t know the details of what happened between them or why exactly the Galra suddenly turned on everything and everyone. I was still quite young at that time, and my father wouldn’t speak of it. We couldn’t actually form Voltron, but-”

“You said-” What exactly had she said? Or indicated?

“Look, we had no other choice! It was the only way to get the Black Lion. My father had a reputation for being quite the diplomat. I don’t know how he did it, but he convinced Zarkon to join the lions with them one last time. We were losing the war, so maybe the Galra thought we were finally giving up. It was a wild card, but it was the only one we had and we decided to play it. The lions would decide the outcome. The Black Lion teleported her pilot someplace else. Father left Red to rejoin us, deploying the other three lions through the wormhole with Black and Red to buy time,” she clarified.

“Once we located Red and Black, The other three paladins and I went out to retrieve them. I hadn’t thought to account for Zarkon’s connection to the Black Lion. His sorceress was waiting for us when we arrived.”

“What happened to the paladins?”

“She destroyed them-”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, her magic-”

“Let’s not get into this.”

“I tried to defend the Lions-”

“And long story short, that’s how the Red Lion was ‘picked up,’ and  _ you _ are partially responsible for damaging Black. You fought your enemy’s agent and made the decision to take what you could to keep it out of their hands.” Keith had grown impatient, and if he had to listen to any more of her convoluted bedtime story, he was going to have to leave.

The persistent numbness was finally wearing off. Rubbing his fingers together, he couldn’t think of a good reason why he shouldn’t be able to use quintessence similarly.

Was this how the lions were made?

Her energy felt good and taking it into himself hadn’t involved much thought or will. He likened the sensation to inhaling fresh morning air, finally released from the concentrated night. Is this what Allura meant when she said he was surrounded by quintessence, that he used the natural energy of the earth this way, or was what Allura sensed on him more like magnetism? Was this what allowed him to heal himself or what had granted him the power to shield himself and Hunk from the burst of heat and flames from the explosion just a few weeks prior?

He needed to start paying closer attention.

Guests stared at them, then averted their eyes. Hunk and Shiro watched from the bar with patent stoicism. Even Pidge had picked up her head to view the light show. And Lance was…

Right behind him. He felt the presence like the lingering aura of blue, pacing across the back of his mind, just barely within the confines of conscious thought, occasionally eyeing Allura.

_ “If she touches him…” _

Keith glanced over at Pidge.

_ “What are you up to, Allura?” _

Hunk pinched the bridge of his nose.

_ “Was that what I think it was?” _

Had he heard them or was his mind playing tricks on him?

Is this how his father had eventually gone mad? Surely such a small amount of quintessence couldn’t be enough to do any damage. Wasn’t he supposed to be able to withstand it?

Lies. Lies. Lies.

_ “What is he going to do now?” _

That last stray thread of thought wasn’t spoken in English. Allura instead used the language of the Lions, but her voice was lighter, almost bittersweet through a pale, milky haze.

_ No! _

Dizzy, he shook his head, and he once again heard nothing except the murmurs of the diners, of people moving and shifting, breathing, glasses being set down, or the scraping of chopsticks against the plastic rice bowls. The voices were gone, but he would have sworn he’d heard their thoughts.

_ You are still in control of this situation. _

Swallowing hard, Keith grabbed the handle of the knife and wrenched it straight up from the split wood with ease. The last thing he’d expected from all this was a lesson about himself, but it suddenly seemed there was still so much to learn.  Shiro was right about Allura. Curiosity and desperation.

He focused again, centering his thoughts on her, hoping there was still enough of her excess energy for him to listen in one more time.

“One more thing then I’m out of here. Did my father  _ ask _ you to do it?”

She clenched her jaw and nodded.

This time, he knew she was telling the truth.

 

+++

 

Keith almost felt like himself again. A slight soreness remained in his shoulder, but the swelling had gone down, the wound completely closed, and he no longer experienced a pressing need to eat everything in sight. The lions took up positions on the sidelines, for the most part leaving him alone, though he knew they were only biding their time. For what, he wished he knew.

What could five sentient machines possibly want with him, Shiro, Hunk, Lance, and Pidge? They were the stuff of myth and legend, divinity of an extraterrestrial origin.

And he believed it. To a different age in human history, Allura would have been herself a god and the lions her chariot. Or maybe it went the other way around, and she was subservient to their needs.

The thought amused him but didn’t keep him occupied for long.

Shiro’s mothers had invited them to Thanksgiving dinner. Them. Not Shiro, but Shiro and Keith, and Shiro being Shiro, had sprung it on him that morning. Thursday. Thanksgiving Day. Right after he’d told Shiro Pidge was waiting for an answer as to whether or not they were coming over for dinner with her, Matt, Hunk, and Lance.

He should have been expecting it. Why else would Shiro have been so insistent on meeting his dad? In that case, where else might Shiro be going with this?

Keith could only imagine Shiro was unsure of how his family would react to bringing home-

_ What? Bringing home what, exactly? _

Shiro hadn’t given him much time to prepare.

Not knowing what else to do, he had called Lance, who promptly arrived with a backpack full of hair product, a flat iron, and vehement objections to every outfit Keith tried to assemble with the clean contents of his wardrobe.

Laundry was the bane of Keith’s domestic existence.

Lance had even done Keith the disservice of staring at his legs, starting at his ankles and following the sleek lines of the black and charcoal athletic compression pants all the way up, ankles to knees, thighs, and groin. “You know, when Shiro talks about your legs, he’s definitely on to something,” he’d pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “However, that doesn’t mean you pass Go, collect two hundred dollars, and get to wear lewd sportswear to a holiday dinner with Shiro’s parents. You’re not presenting yourself to them like the obligatory bottle of wine, and I hate to break it to you, Mullet, but something tells me they prefer pie.”

Whatever magic Lance worked with the flat iron had the effect of taming his unruly hair, although he’d been forced to sit through a lecture about hair care from someone whose own hair was so fine it clung like a swim cap unless generously gelled to “fashionable bed head.” Keith had seen the pot of shimmery blue product. Lance’s secret was out.

A subsequent run to T. J. Maxx had netted several name brand pieces that Lance had dubbed “classic” and grudgingly agreed didn’t have to be washed first. This selection included one pullover sweater that was a step or three up from his threadbare plaid and slacks that clung appropriately, at least according to the random stranger Lance had conscripted for a subjective, non-partisan opinion.

Shiro had eyed him strangely the entirety of the five-hour trip to Malibu.

“I don’t smell weird, do I?” Keith asked, cautiously side-eyeing him. Lance had sprayed him with something that carried the distinct odor of Earl Gray tea and a forest after fresh rain. It came in a simple gray-blue bottle and had an haute-couture name he’d presently forgotten. Nearly missing the turn, he abruptly spun the wheel, squealing as he drifted across oncoming traffic onto the drive Shiro had pointed out just moments before.

With a Chevy pickup that had the turning radius of a cruise ship.

But what were tight quarters to a fighter pilot?

Shiro kept forgetting that, and Keith knew it, present in the wide-eyed surprise and the expression that asked him who the hell he thought he was. He couldn’t blame it on faulty memory, it was just, well. Major Akira Kogane was supposed to be some kind of legend. He’d seen his own face on recruitment flyers and hardly recognized himself with his tight haircut and almost roguish, crooked grin. They’d put him right on the front, and there was no mistaking the insignia on his flight suit or the helmet cradled in his arm. The phrase “Aim High” cut across the bottom of the tri-fold brochure. Once, when he’d gone in on contract, someone had asked him if he’d met the guy.

_ Yeah, we’ve met once or twice. _

That was before he’d handed over his ID. It was better now, on his terms, but he’d done his time, and sometimes that’s all one can do to get by. He’d never been particularly good at following rules, in any incarnation.

“No,” Shiro replied carefully, slamming into the door, springing the latch, and scrabbling to hold it shut.

What had he asked again? Oh right. Lance’s iconic cologne.

“You look... uncomfortable,” Shiro added.

“I don’t want to make a bad impression.”

Shiro’s expression changed, softening with a small sigh and a quiet smile.

Pulling up behind the row of cars, Keith craned his neck to the rearview mirror. The hole left by his nose ring kind of looked like an enlarged pore. Shiro had said his parents wouldn’t care, and that his brother didn’t matter, but without knowing what he’d be walking into, Keith found himself unwilling to compromise. He examined his teeth, but there wasn’t any reason to. He hadn’t eaten since he’d brushed them that morning and rummaged through the contents of Shiro’s medicine cabinet for the whitening strips, fully recognizing the vanity but also knowing full well that parents could be extremely judgmental when it came to their precious progeny. Shiro didn’t deserve that hell. Keith had resolved to be on his best behavior.

Before he forgot, he pulled up his pant leg and grabbed the knife from his boot to hide it in the sunvisor. That should have stayed at home.

“Don’t worry about it. They have to deal with me. I don’t think anything you could do would surprise them.”

That, Keith knew, was probably true. Shiro had a father, somewhere across the Pacific, and that man hadn’t bothered to show up when his son had re-appeared just miles from where radar had last placed him. On the other hand, the woman who had given birth to him had stayed by his side for more than six months of recovery. Shiro reluctantly admitted he had no previous cognitive memory of her, of her spouse, or his father, of the brother he might have mentioned once in passing. He went through the motions because doing so made it easier. At least he had his words, his name. And a quick mind that had learned how to compensate seamlessly.

What would he find, or possibly what would they find here? Keith stared at the sizeable ocean-front property before him, built into the side of the coast, ready to fall crashing to the rocks below or possibly float away if an earthquake knocked it loose from the stilts and concrete foundation.

Despite the fact that the fanciest vehicle in the drive was a Prius, he wondered if they’d brew him coffee in the morning from the same digitally programmed Keurig Shiro had sitting on his counter that made one cup of perfectly lukewarm, bitter, stale joe?

He reached into his pocket for a smoke, but Shiro stopped him, fingertips gently grazed across the back of his hand.

“Just one.”

Shiro reached behind the bench for a grocery bag. “You can do it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know. But you should.”

Keith stared at him.

“Think about all that money you could be putting into your retirement fund.”

“I’m not going to live that long, and money doesn’t go with you to the grave.”

Shiro opened his mouth as if about to retort, but instead puffed his cheeks, resigned that he’d been beaten to the death joke. “Let’s go inside.” He dropped the bag on the bench between them and opened the door.

“Takashi?” Came a voice from the porch.

Hopping out, he turned around. “Kaasan!”

Keith had missed his window of opportunity. Shiro flashed him a grin as he rummaged through the contents. Shiro really had made good on his threat. Shoving the bag of nicotine candies and the dreaded patch under the seat, he wiped the sour expression off his face and climbed out to meet the people claiming Shiro as their own.

A petite woman, with smartly bobbed hair, coal black and punctuated by only a few strands of silver, wearing white L.A. Gears, stonewashed waist-high jeans, a floral print turtleneck, and coral, jersey knit cardigan crushed Shiro in her embrace. Her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. Keith immediately decided he liked her as she babbled on about food and exercise, the bandages on his fingers, patting Shiro’s cheeks and telling him he looked like he’d been sleeping well in whirlwind Japanese.

_ Kaasan. _

Her eyes crinkled the same as Shiro’s when she smiled.

“And you must be Keith.” She spoke only his name in a perfect west coast accent before squeezing him just as tightly, Shiro watching in horror over her head, full of simpering apology.

A knot of anxiety formed in his chest. He tried to swallow it down, but it stuck fast and refused to move.

A second woman stepped off the porch, taller, dressed in a pink jumper with her long, highlighted hair parted on the side, bangs trimmed straight across her forehead just above perfectly groomed but sparse and expertly colored in eyebrows. She gently extracted the first woman from him. “Mariko, let him breathe!” She took the liberty of brushing Keith off as she made her assessment. He could only back up so far before he stood spine to the door of his truck. He fought the urge to bolt from the hands-on straightening and smoothing as he remained frozen in place. She swapped to English. “I’m sorry about that. She’s just, well, we’re glad you came.”

_ Say something. _

“Uh, yeah, me too.” Not exactly what he thought he should have said, but it filled the gap.

“I’m Yasue.” She stood back, holding out her hand.

He grasped it firmly. “Keith.”

Yasue smiled and led him to the house, ushering Mariko and Shiro on ahead as two more figures appeared at the door, a blond woman and a man, who looked almost exactly like-

Keith grabbed Shiro’s sleeve, pulling his arm hard as the coil of nerves plummeted into his stomach. “You didn’t tell me you’re a twin!” Shiro stepped back, nearly tripping off the step to the porch before he caught himself.

“Oh.” He laughed nervously, scrubbing his fingers around the back of his neck.

The near-duplicate, with his flawless skin and glossy black hair, laughed too. “And you didn’t tell me he’s hot.”

“I didn’t think you were so inclined,” Shiro shot back, hand at Keith’s hip to pull him close.

“I could make an exception,” Shiro’s brother replied with a wink, closing the door behind them.

_ Awkward. _

Keith toed his shoes off, wishing he could have seen the look on Shiro’s face. After kissing his cheek, Shiro clung to him, protective and yet at the same time pressing his fingers in with a territorial edge that made Keith wonder what rivalry existed between the two. Shiro had deliberately kept this information on the low down.

“Ryou-” Shiro began but was immediately cut short.

“Oh, shut up and hug me.”

Shiro released his hold on Keith and sighed into the familial embrace. The nuances of this brotherhood completely lost on him.

The blond woman crossed her arms, eyebrow raised. “Look at that. You’d think they actually like each other or something.”

Keith’s attention remained fixed on the brothers. Shiro was doing what he thought he had to, and Ryou remained enigmatically unreadable. “You’re not joking.”

“Nope. You’re Keith. I’m Romelle. Unfortunately, that,” she pointed sharply at Ryou, “is my husband. He thinks he’s funny. Shiro does not.”

“Must you ruin my good fun? I didn’t expect my brother to show up with a model for Esquire.”

Turning to Keith, Romelle scanned him with a narrowed gaze, the attention wearying. She could have just as easily touched his hair, they way she carded through it with her eyes, mapping the way it laid around his face, the open button at his collar and the stretch of his sweater across his shoulders. Practically everyone else had put their hands on him, so why not two more?

“Are you a model for Esquire?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Well, you should be.”

_ No,  _ they  _ should be. _

But there is no accounting for taste.

Mariko clapped her hands together, “Come on kids, go sit down. Dinner’s almost ready.”

 

+++

 

“Keith?” Shiro asked breathily, coming up for air.

Humming, eyes still closed, Keith planted soft kisses against Shiro’s neck, one hand twisted in his short hair, the other drifting over his full stomach to his belt, fumbling with the buckle.

“I have- there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Now?” Keith murmured playfully tugging on Shiro’s earlobe with his teeth, a soft purr rumbling from the back of his throat.

“Keith.” Gently Shiro extracted himself, taking Keith’s hand in his. “I just- I-” He stopped, shirt rumpled and half pulled out from his waistband, perspiration dotting his forehead. He swallowed hard and mopped at his brow with his cuff.

“Well?” Keth asked, impatient and anxious to get back to hands-on recreation.

“I- love you.”

He froze, convinced he had not heard correctly, although there was little mistaking the cadence of what should have been recognized as one of the most complicated simple phrases in the English language.

_ You- what? _

Several long, surreal seconds passed as they stared at each other, the creaking glider slowing to a deadening halt, the still air suffocating and smothering in its expiring heat.

Had Shiro intended to drop that bomb or had the words just sort of fallen out?

No, Shiro wanted him to know.

Keith wasn’t sure what he had expected, but that wasn’t it. So now, instead of working toward a modicum of relief for the hard-on he’d suffered for the greater part of the last hour, he found himself contemplating the breadth, immediacy, constancy, and fortitude of a four-letter word and its application to his relationship with the man he was, quite literally, sitting on.

“Okay.” he finally said, when Shiro continued to stare at him with a look of grave expectancy.

“Yeah, uh,” Shiro licked his lips and pulled his brows together, “How about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, you said-”

“What? What did I say?”

“That I- You know.”

Keith sighed.

“That wasn’t what you meant, was it?” Shiro asked the rhetorical question. And followed it up almost immediately. “Do you love me?”

“Love is a four-letter word.” Keith deflected, leaning back, hands flat against Shiro’s thighs. “For something so small it’s incredibly consequential. It leaves the door open to so many possibilities, like, ‘I don’t know what to say, but I think this is what you want to hear,’ or ‘you’ll do for now until I find someone better.’”

He couldn’t read Shiro’s expression, but he didn’t move. He slid his hands up to Shiro’s groin and pressed the heel of his palm unyielding against Shiro’s erection before running his knuckles over the rise. Why did Shiro want to have this conversation now?

Shiro grabbed his wrist to stop him. “I’m serious, Keith.”

_ That’s what I was afraid of. _ He wrenched his arm away.

He needed to shut this down. It couldn’t end in anything good. People had a way of happening to Keith Kogane. Precedent told him Shiro would eventually leave. It wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when. Forcing out a laugh, Keith finally spoke, “How many glasses of wine did you have at dinner? We’re making out on your mothers’ porch, Thanksgiving evening. Are you sure you haven’t gotten love mixed up with lust? I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty horny and you’re looking a little.” He paused, one arm braced on the back of the glider, the other reaching forward to grope at his boyfriend, but Shiro stopped him, this time lacing their fingers together.

“Keith-”

“You’re being ridiculous.” Keith wasn’t sure he even believed in love. Conceptually, it was so fickle. Historically, it drove people to sheer stupidity, birthing impetus through loss, despair, and grief. The icon on their rubbers reminded him constantly of that truth.

“It’s a simple question.”

No, it was not, and why couldn’t this have waited until after sex?

“What are you afraid of?” Keith shot back before Shiro could corner him with the same.

“I-” Shiro hesitated, thoughtful for a long moment. “Yes or no.”

He’d done it anyway. Shiro could be so perceptive sometimes. He probably hadn’t even realized it.

“It’s very straightforward,” Shiro prompted, trying again, still hopefully gazing at him, full of expectant promise.

“It’s not and I’m not going to dignify your question with a response. How can you ask this of me and expect a reasonable answer? You’re happy, I’m happy. We get along. Great! Is that all love is to you?” Keith had to restrain himself from covering his mouth. He hadn’t meant to say it like that.

“No. I love you because you’re kind and smart and funny. You’re insanely talented, and you aren’t afraid to be you. You genuinely enjoy my company, as I do yours, and I miss you when you’re gone. You’re beautiful, but I don’t think you care about that. You’ve memorized the way I eat my eggs and take my coffee. You’re kind of messy and a little slovenly, but in a short time, you’ve managed to teach me that it’s okay to be less than perfect and given me hope that as long as I’m here, there’s always reason to try and strive for something better. I think I could spend the rest of my life with you and never wonder if I made the wrong choice.”

_ You don’t know what you’re saying. _

Keith shook his head, swallowed down the lump in his throat, and climbed off to sit beside Shiro, clutching his aching stomach. It was him; Keith was the one who was scared.

He wanted to puke. How was it something like this could hurt so much? After trying so hard to do everything right, it was now in danger of falling apart. He couldn’t reciprocate. Reciprocation was a commitment, a sacred promise. Keith drove his fingers through his hair and pulled it back from his face across as he dragged his nails across his scalp.

Twisting toward him, Shiro took his hand and squeezed, a reinforcement of what they already shared.

“Do you mind if I say it?” Shiro asked, eyeing him cautiously, unable to hide his disappointment.

Keith clasped his hands in his lap, his own erection was softening, and his groin ached. Sweat still dotted his flesh, and his shirt was stuck to his back. He should have taken Lance’s advice and worn a t-shirt underneath. “Yes.” He did mind and shook his head. His mind reeled, taking stock of the damage.

Why did people have to be so complicated?

“Words get tired if you use them too often,” Keith continued. “They lose their meaning and become hollow, or you stop being able to hear them altogether.” For someone who had studied a lot of chemistry, he’d done a terrible job of buffering the solution. People don’t work like that, and sometimes a reminder was necessary.

He’d also killed his chances of getting laid that night.

Shiro nodded, slowly. “You know how I feel. I don’t agree with you, but I think I understand your position.” His remarkable ability to project an unflappable amiability was like a bandage slapped on the bleeding surface of a wounded heart.

It tore at Keith’s own, and just like that, he had wedged a crowbar into the space between them and widened the rift without lifting a finger. He stepped off the porch, surprised by the dampness in the crisp air.

The wooden planks beneath his feet creaked as Shiro stood and walked slowly toward the door. “I’m going up to bed.”

Keith didn’t turn around to say good night, and a chill crept up the back of his neck as the door shut quietly.

 

+++

 

Keith sat on the bottom step, cigarette between his lips unlit, stretching his legs and digging his toes into the sand. It seemed Mariko Shirogane and her wife had found one of the few dwellings along this spine of the earth with a realized beachfront, or maybe they paid someone to reconstruct it whenever it succumbed to erosion. A crescent sliver of moon still cut its grin through the coral sunrise that only existed because a roll of heavy smog had unfurled itself over the land, holding the surrounding city hostage with all its inhabitants. Even in November.

Footsteps creaked on the stairs above him, getting louder, and he scooted over to one side, but the person stopped before passing.

“What’s going on?” Mariko sat down beside him, thrusting a mug of very black coffee toward him as she sipped at her own. “Takashi was up pacing all night and I thought maybe you’d left, but your truck is still here and well, I finally found you.”

Explaining himself to Shiro’s mother ranked high on the list of things Keith did not want to do.

“Come on.” She rubbed his back. “Whatever it is, spit it out. My mom sense is kicking in, and you can’t hide from it.”

He groaned. The attempt to keep it in didn’t work, and it escaped his mouth with a breath of air and a slump of his shoulders.

“Are you going to at least offer me one?” She patted his shoulder and pointed to his cigarette before wrapping both hands around her mug for warmth, but the gesture had the added effect of making her look childishly expectant. “Okay, fine. I get it. Strong, stoic type. I probably wouldn’t want to talk to me either. What was it you said about Shiro at dinner? Oh yes. ‘Who wouldn’t want to tap-’”

Keith scrabbled to pull the cigarette case he’d reappropriated from Shiro out of his pocket and handed it over. He’d blabbed the story of how he’d met Shiro.

_ Just look at him! Who wouldn’t want to tap that? _

“If you don’t mind me saying so, it was hard not to laugh.” Mariko winked, a sly smile playing on her lips for just a moment before she unclasped the latch, chose her poison and snapped the case shut again. He lit it for her, the flame sparking to life as she leaned into it, puffing on the smoke.

“Shiro wants me to quit.”

“Of course he does,” she replied as if it was the most natural response. “It’s bad for your health.”

This was shaping up to be a mom-talk, unsolicited parental-type guidance where an older person decided they knew precisely what was going on, how to fix it, and provide advice that actually had no bearing at all upon the situation at hand. Keith stared ahead into the ocean, the sun having finally risen high enough to cast a golden glow upon the white-capped peaks of each wave as they pushed ever onward in their futile race toward the shore.

“You’re very cautious with people, aren’t you?” She took a long drag, leaning back on her elbows. “Just don’t be too careful with yourself, or you might never find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

Was that it? He glanced at her, and she shrugged, meeting his eyes. What was that even supposed to mean?

“Here.” She pressed her face toward his, and he lit his cigarette off hers, embracing the momentary calm and the mellow taste of old growth and fresh earth. It was a flavor far removed from this polluted seascape or the arid desert he called home. Funny he rarely noticed or appreciated it anymore.

_ Habits are hard to break. _

“I’m glad you came,” she went on. “I’d been wanting to meet you. Takashi keeps texting me pictures, some of which I’m not sure he meant to send me. He’s not always so good about talking out his feelings, but you mean a great deal to him-”

Keith’s phone rang. An annoyingly traditional old bell that rattled three times and paused before taking up a second and then a third bout of alarm. He took it out of his pocket and stared at it, recognizing the number he’d deliberately avoided adding as a contact.

The person didn’t leave a voicemail. They called back.

“Someone wants your attention,” said Mariko.

“Yeah.” He answered the call, smashing his cigarette into the sand. “Hello.”

“We have a situation, and I need you here right now.”

_ General Montgomery. _

“It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m at-“ he stopped before he slipped back into the familiar erasure. It wasn’t denial. “I’m with my boyfriend and his family. In Malibu.”

“We know.”

“It’s a  _ holiday _ ,” he stressed.

“Yes, and I need you here as soon as possible.”

“Don’t you have better things to do on a national holiday than to bother me? No! There’s a clause in my contract about advance notice. This is not advance notice.”

“Kogane-” the general warned.

“I am not-”

“Akira Kogane, I am not giving you a choice. You will be briefed when you get here. A driver is on the way who will take you to the airport. He should be there in fifteen,” she paused, “no, ten minutes. Do what you need to do and be ready when he arrives. Don’t worry about packing, everything you need will be provided. I’ll see you in New Mexico.”

She hung up. New Mexico? He’d just come from New Mexico.

“Are you all right?” Mariko asked.

Keith felt a sharp chill in his cheeks as the blood drained from his face. His heart plummeted into his stomach, and he clutched at the sudden soreness.

“I have to go. My boss is sending me to New Mexico.” He threw up his hands.

“Which base?”

Over dinner, he’d told her his primary employment was through a contract with the Air Force. “I don’t know.”

“Takashi told me your father was stationed at Roswell. Walker Air Force Base has been closed since 1967.”

Where was she going with this? “Whoever told you that was wrong.”

“Did Takashi tell you I worked for the Air Force? Five years as a geneticist out at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, through a military contract. My husband insisted I quit when we decided to start a family. Didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be working around all those chemicals. He was probably right, and my kids grew up healthy, so I can’t complain.”

He nodded, only half listening. The General could have picked a better time to call him away. It wasn’t that he’d argued with Shiro, but he didn’t want to go without knowing where  _ they _ stood. Was there still a  _ them _ after all that? He needed to dump his emotional baggage or pack it up and leave altogether, but he hadn’t yet, and if it was destined to happen, he needed to preempt Shiro and break it off himself. First. It was important that he be the one choosing, that he be in control of something in his life.

He wondered how much General Montgomery knew if she was able to find him out here. Maybe it was a good guess, but if not, how had she traced him? His phone? A bug on his truck? What?

“It’ll be fine.” Shiro’s mother looked up at him. “You’ll be fine.”

He shivered. That mom sense. What did she know? “I need to tell Shiro.”

She nodded definitively once as he turned away to race up the steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro's birth mom is definitely based on my mom. I love her!


	10. The Fourth Dimension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro has difficulty coping with things he can't control, and Keith just happens to be one of those things. But the pieces are starting to fall into place and the Paladins need to retrieve their Lions if they're going to make a stand against whatever is coming their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squick warning for people bothered by provoked injury. "Minor consensual cannibalism" makes it sound far worse than it actually is.

_This is the way the world ends._

 

+++

 

The truck lurched forward as Shiro struggled to wrest the transmission into fourth gear.

Lance slid off the bench into the dash, gripping his soda so hard the lid popped off and the brown, diet concoction sloshed down his shirt. Bits of chewed chicken finger flew from his mouth. “Hey!”

Shiro pretended not to hear.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Lance asked, scooting back onto the seat. He grabbed a wad of extra napkins from the takeout bag and mopped at his jeans.

Shiro was not about to incriminate himself with a response. Of course, he knew where he was going. _Absolutely._

“Okay. Me neither.” Lance popped his fingers into his mouth to scrape at whatever had caught between his teeth.

_Gross._

Shiro’s brows knit together as he continued to glare through the scratched and pitted haze of the windshield.

“Shiro?” Hunk tapped him on the shoulder.

Startled, he rammed the accelerator into the floor, revving the engine. Pulling back, he accidentally smacked the stick, pushing it toward third. Fumbling with his prosthetic hand, he laid off the gas, slammed the clutch, and down-shifted, by some miracle avoiding a stall-out. Shiro ground his teeth together and pinched at the ache traveling from behind his eyes to his sinuses. He needed to re-center, to focus, to maintain his calm. Keith would be less than pleased if Shiro returned his beloved _junker_ in anything other than passably working order. He shouldn’t call it that. What the truck lacked in aesthetics, it made up for in responsiveness and handling.

Except when he handled it, apparently, and he most certainly did not want to think about the consequences of destroying the transmission, even by accident. Yet here he was, driving the truck. Responsibility lay in his capable hands.

_Hand._

_Whatever._

At exactly two weeks, Shiro had received one hurried phone call from an unlisted number cut short after barely a hello. All his attempts to return it didn’t go through and Keith’s phone had no service.

_Fuck that shit._

When, not if, his boyfriend was returned, he intended to have some words with General Montgomery. Very strong words. Words perhaps less crass than the ones he was presently considering, but hopefully just as effective.

“Shiro?” Pidge balanced precariously over the bench, stuffing a fry into her mouth. “What mile marker did you say we’re looking for again?”

“I didn’t.” He snapped.

He wanted to talk to Keith; he’d missed something, or misjudged, or possibly both. His mind tread its paths through a foggy swamp, one wrong step and into the quagmire, he’d sink. He needed a distraction. The radio blasted to life with a twist of the dial on the central panel.

“Uh, Shiro?” Lance prompted, wiping his hands on his shirt and reaching tentatively for Shiro’s arm.

Shiro cut his gaze sharply toward him, forcing him to stop.

_Typical._

He puffed air out through his nose and turned up the volume.

From the blown-out speakers, Chris Isaak crooned to the metallic twang of an acoustic guitar. _“World was on fire, no one could save me but you-”_ Shiro’s heart missed a beat, clenched, and he silenced the noise before he had a panic attack.

This time Lance didn’t hesitate, bracing himself against the dash with one leg and clutching at Shiro’s arm. “Shiro, buddy, look, you have got to snap out of it!”

_Don’t touch it!_

Hissing through his teeth, he jerked his prosthetic away, swerving into oncoming traffic and out again as Pidge yelled over his shoulder, “Slow down!”

Hunk swallowed hard, climbing over the bench, shoving Lance closer to Shiro as he wedged himself in and reached for the window crank. “You gotta pull over, man!”

Shiro’s grip on the proverbial “it” weakened with each passing second, composure and control sending him off with a kiss and a prayer. He cursed under his breath, braking inexpertly, and sliding onto the shoulder as a cascade of dust sprayed through the air and into Hunk’s face. The mile marker glowed in the frosted beams of dingy headlights.

_Pull yourself together!_

_It’s only performative._

Spitting out the dirt and debris, Hunk wrestled with the door handle, collapsing to the ground in his escape and purging his stomach of its contents. Lance slid out after him, followed by Pidge, yet Shiro didn’t move. He pulled out his phone, in case he’d missed a call, staring at it, at the photo he’d snapped of himself and Keith at the Grand Canyon. Just the time, date, and their smiling faces, no texts, no notifications. In other words, the usual.

_Is anybody in there?_

Crickets.

“Hey Siri, call Keith.”

After prolonged silence and more nothing, a pleasant female voice replied in recording, “The number you have dialed cannot be reached at this time.”

The phone fell from his hand, and his forehead hit the steering wheel.

They hadn’t argued; Keith hadn’t even been upset, per se, well, he’d been obviously upset but not angry. At least not angry enough to channel it at Shiro. He replayed those last several hours. Keith hadn’t come back inside until the following morning when he’d burst into the guest room in a storm of raging fury, ranting about Montgomery and a summons to New Mexico.

 

_“What?” Shiro sat up, mouth agape._

_“Look, a driver is on the way to take me to the airport.” Keith rooted around his bag, pulling out a t-shirt and jeans before peeling off his sweater, wadding it up, and chucking it at the foot of the bed. He began unbuttoning his shirt, pausing midway, to empty his pockets onto the comforter. Picking up his keys, he removed one, tucked it in his cigarette case, and set the ring on the nightstand with Shiro’s things._

_“You can’t go.”_

_“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.” He ripped through the remainder of the buttons, shrugged off the shirt, balled it up and hurled it at the sweater. “Besides, I don’t get a choice.”_

_“Don’t be like this. Just call her back.”_

_“Shiro,” Keith sighed, finally looking up at him, irritation ripe in his smoldering stare, “No.”_

 

That was it. Shiro had gotten nothing else out of him. Except he knew Keith was somewhere north of Santa Fe. He’d been sulking with Pidge, Lance, and Hunk when Keith had called. Pidge had tried to trace it but couldn’t get an exact location.

He tried not to think about the legal quandaries surrounding her ability to do that. Why did she have that kind of equipment anyway? Was it something to do with her dad?

“Come on!” Lance drawled, leaning in and gripping the roof as he stretched his long, lean form, arching his back and rocking on his toes. His eyes fell on the phone, and his expression softened. “What’s going on.”

“I wish I knew.” Shiro wrapped his arms around the wheel to bury his face.

“Nothing happened between you two, right? I mean-”

“No,” he said quickly, too quickly, he realized jerking his face up to those questioning blue eyes. Lance always saw more than anyone realized.

Lance blinked.

Shiro found himself suddenly aware again of the tightness in his scar tissue, the pulsating soreness at the end of his residual limb. It burned, and he didn’t fight it, shrugging off the arm, rolling down the stocking, and rubbing at the stump with the heel of his palm. Perhaps it was bone growth; he knew it could happen. Though the sudden, lingering sharpness reminded him of when his wisdom teeth had come in, erupting through his gums as tiny peaks through the soft flesh.

Was that a memory?

“What did you fight over?” Lance hadn’t moved.

“Who said anything about fighting? I’m worried.”

“Why?” Pidge pushed past Lance. “He told you what he was doing. There weren’t any secrets. He even tried to call you. I heard the entire conversation.”

Shiro stared at her blankly.

“Have you read his books?” she asked, seemingly at random.

“No.”

“You should. He’s funny. I think he writes about things he knows. all within the realm of conspiracy, but still…” she trailed off, clearly occupied by a new thought. “I might know where he is.”

“What? Where!” Shiro turned so suddenly he crunched his knee on the steering column. He winced.

“It just occurred to me. There’s rumor of a human/extraterrestrial joint base at Dulce, northwest of Los Alamos, underground. Nothing official, at least not that I’m aware. But why would the Air Force need to send their star pilot out to such a remote location?” She quirked a brow; lips sealed knowingly.

“Aliens.” Hunk said, still shaky from being car sick.

“Well, yeah-” Pidge began.

“Damn straight. I’m telling you, Keith is an alien. Shiro found him in a Denny’s. That’s all the proof-” Lance paused, “Did you guys hear that?” Jumping away from the truck, he craned his neck toward the open expanse before him, listening.

“Hear what?” Hunk stood up, using the front fender for support as he regained his land legs.

“That!” Lance declared, urgently this time, hands up and head tilted thoughtfully skyward. “Come on! I think I know where she is!” He skipped a step then took off into the desert.

“Who?” Pidge yelled.”

“The Blue Lion! You know, the one we came out here to find?” he called back, his words echoing off the steep walls of the arroyo as he skidded down the slope and disappeared.

Shiro shuddered. He had the distinct impression he’d done this before, but Keith had been there too. Perhaps the time and place had been different, perhaps it had been a dream, but regardless, it felt like real-time déjà vu.

 

+++

 

Roughly shoving a flashlight into his hands, the General had left him there, alone, staring at the craft before him. Keith had never seen anything quite like it, but it’s presence loomed, both striking and unsettling. On the surface, it resembled a simple, flat, disc-like object, yet the entire outer shell was a single sheet of metal. Geometric patterns imitating a circuit board raced in linear paths across the surface. He rapped on it with a knuckle, solid and warmer than he’d expected. Instead of resting on wheels or some other sort of landing gear, the entire aircraft hovered, although it appeared to be powered down. The official report stated that no one had been able to get it operational. He’d figured that out by holding the redacted pages up to the light to read the faint print obscured by wide black marker strokes.

General Montgomery had brought him in to turn over a flying saucer.

 

_“This is the reason you interrupted my holiday? Where did this thing even come from?”_

_“You don’t need to know.”_

_“Yes, I do. How do you expect me to figure out what no one else here has if you don’t tell me anything about it?”_

_“Kogane, shut your trap and get to work.”_

_“Yes, sir,” he’d replied with a willfully cheeky and sloppy salute._

 

Had the general scowled more aggressively, her face would have broken, and Keith would have been left to collect the pieces in a dustpan and explain it to her superiors in the Pentagon.

Nope, he most certainly did not want that job.

No one needed to tell him the aircraft was not from Earth. He climbed the rolling staircase up to the hatch and hoisted himself in, shining the flashlight around the small space. Cleanly defined surfaces marked the interior. A chair, like a regular pilot’s seat only larger, sat positioned near what Keith assumed was the console, lined with dark, flat panels. The steering projected upward from the smooth metallic floor at the base of the chair, much like the floor-mounted gear shift in his truck. Switches and levers lined the curved upper edge of the windshield.

What did they expect him to do, just start pressing buttons and hope he didn’t blow himself up?

With a heavy sigh, he crashed backward into the chair, fuchsia lights sparking to life as his head his the backrest, traveling along all the edges of the chair, even as it conformed to his body and adjusted to put the controls within his reach. The fresh soles of his newly issued boots dragged against the smooth floor and a flash of the light radiated out, illuminating the cockpit. With a soft whir, a flat screen panel disengaged from the console and moved before him, tilting upward for him to see, but remaining below the field of view over the front of the craft. The panel had the slick, smooth feel of black glass, nearly opaque. Bright red characters formed on the surface with an outline at the right in the shape of a hand, significantly larger than his own. It flashed, then blinked regularly, waiting.

None of this was in the dossier.

Rumblings and murmurs grew from the recesses of his mind as the lions chattered amongst themselves. He didn’t want to talk to them.

_Breathe._

Pushing the air out of his lungs, he coughed from the unconscious effort of holding it in. Shaking out his hair, he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and scrubbed at the dampness around his eyes with his sleeve.

The walkie-talkie at his belt crackled to life, and he unhooked it from his belt, staring as it spoke to him. “Kogane, what’s going on in there.”

Collecting himself, he pressed the button to speak, “I sat down.”

“You sat down.”

It was a statement.

“Yes,” he paused, considering. Surely he hadn’t been the first person to sit in the chair. It was a chair. Anyone considering the problem of powering on the aircraft, or spaceship as he assumed it really was, would most likely have sat down eventually. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought, watching the screen again, the slow, hypnotic blink of the red lights.

He reached out, then stopped. The characters had to represent letters or words, but what did they say? Keith pictured them in his mind’s eye. Perhaps the Lions would know.

_“It won’t hurt you.”_

He thought it was Black.

He pushed her away with a strength of conviction mustered from sheer desire. The sooner he finished up here, the sooner he could go-

Where?

He had kind of blown it with Shiro, but what else could he have said? Sure, he’d panicked, and he’d been robbed of the opportunity to do any real damage control.

Burying those thoughts, he pressed his gloved palm into the outline; the craft rumbled to life, the indicator lights flared to brilliance and through the swell of the windshield, he could see the light course over the geometry of the craft.

Keith spoke into the radio, “Okay, it’s on.” He yawned. “Was that it, ‘cause that didn’t take me very long, and I can’t believe no one tried sitting down-”

“Your impertinence is noted, Kogane. Stop talking.”

“Yes, _sir_ ,” he drawled in contempt.

“Your new task is to figure out how it flies. We’ll be moving the craft to the test chamber. See how much we can get out of her, figure out what she is capable of, what other secrets she might be hiding.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” He didn’t understand. “You don’t even know how this thing works.”

“Kogane,” she warned, “don’t push your luck.”

It took several days for Keith to work out the correct sequencing and there were a handful of ways to go about getting the craft off the ground that would likely be quite different if launched from space. He had no means of testing that, although he felt certain the craft was more than capable of reaching and maintaining speeds higher than the requisite escape velocity from the Earth’s gravitational pull. He still hadn’t puzzled out the power source either. No access panels were visible, either inside or out. He wasn’t even sure what part of the craft housed it. He detected no intake or exterior venting systems, yet even with the hatch closed, he had no trouble spending hours inside able to breathe the recirculated air just fine. It occurred to him to check for radiation, requesting someone locate a Geiger Counter and check it inside and out to make sure it wasn’t going to irradiate the base.

Or himself.

The readings declared it about as dangerous as a microwave.

Keith had been there for over two weeks when the General finally instructed him to take the ship out, handing him a flight plan and a regional map.

Post-it notes and labels littered the interior, with numbers and tags defining the order of operations. They’d deliberately chosen a night with no moon or clouds, only a cover of stars. The craft flew soundless and smooth, with an occasionally audible pressure release when he shifted flight modes. Rising through the clear sky, he felt a prickle start at his nape and whisper through his mind, growing louder until he thought his head would burst and everything contained within would coat the cockpit in its spatter.

_“Lance!”_

He heard it as clearly as he had the Black Lion’s call to Shiro.

A small blinking dot appeared on his navigation pane, closing in on his left as the radar beeped in warning.

_“I’m coming!”_

The voice rang unexpectedly through his head. Keith tried to push the Blue Lion away, as he’d been teaching himself to do, but her insistent tone only grew louder. Instead of the console and the limpid sky, he saw Lance’s face gaze in wonder through the honeycomb sphere.

Her eyes. He saw through her eyes, and her excitement washed over him at the arrival of her Paladin.

Something beeped on the command screen, a light blinking in the corner recalled his attention. Keith was about to tap it with his fingertip, but before he could, an image broken up by crackling light sprang to the screen, adjusting to the form of another pilot, someone presumably seated in a sister craft, dark-suited with a helmet that hid the pilot’s face just as Keith’s hid his own.

The other pilot spoke to him in a gravelly voice, the language at once comforting and foreign.

He recognized the dialect; it was like the radio transmission they had intercepted.

_Galra._

This new arrival flew close beside him. Its lights flashed briefly in warning, and a turret rose from the upper hull before it fell back.

The voice spoke again, “Identification, airman.”

_Shit._

He didn’t know where the camera was but suspected that if he could see this other pilot, they could see him as well.

_“Lance!”_

Keith felt the breath leave his lungs as he hit the honeycombed barrier, flickering in and out of his vision. He checked his course, still following the flight plan.

A violet blast flashed through the air at his left, a second warning. Blazing shards of glimmering aqua light washed out his field of vision. He couldn’t force his lungs to work, and when he opened his mouth, water came rushing in. Sinking fast, his head reeled, bubbles of air brewing up around him, the light dimming to a single ray scattered through the currents and ripples of his thrashing limbs. Something pinned him down; he couldn’t break free.

The safety harness.

A thud hit the fuselage, or what he assumed was the fuselage, from behind.

The Blue Lion ripped him back to her. Water poured from his helmet, soaking his flight suit, dripping off the panels and switches. He wheezed, oxygen filled his lungs, and he snapped to attention. A flicker from deep within her cold dead eyes was all she could give.

“Kogane? Kogane, report.”

Report what? Everything was dry. Chills ran up his limbs.

The radio was still on at the other end, multiple voices in panicked commotion spoke over each other.

“His vitals are all over the place, sir. Erratic pulse, his temperature’s dropped five degrees, brain waves are- he’ll have to-”

“He’s losing altitude.”

“Pull up!”

He lifted his head to the lion. No, Lance lifted his head, and he was suddenly Lance.

_Come on! It’s you. You have to give it to her!_

Reaching, reaching.

He pulled back on the steering, tilting the craft upward again.

The other pilot on the comm screen was saying something, but he couldn’t focus to hear more than part of it.

“Vrepit Sa!”

The Blue Lion called her Paladin again. _“Lance?”_

Something warm and wet dripped down his face from his nose. He licked his lips: salty, slimy blood. Jerking his head back, he sucked it down, and swallowed. With another turbulent pitch, Keith’s helmet cracked against the back of the chair. Where had that come from? He needed to check the logs, but too many things were happening at once.

Disappointment crushed him with its overwhelming presence, the darkness overbearing, and rushing waves arcing overhead crashed before his eyes, blanketing him in foam.

_“I don’t know how to do this.”_

_Yes, you do._

From someplace buried within, Keith reached for the core of the Earth. Dredged up power coursed through him, burning his limbs to numbness as if he were on fire. Embers blazed behind his eyes. The fabric of his gloves crackled and smoked, fizzling to charred ash and melted plastic that wept dark rivers over his unmarred flesh like the nectar of a tarpit.

Off the sticks, he thrust his hands forward above the console.

Lance fell to the ground, landing on hands and knees as a well of pure energy surged forth toward the lion. Her eyes flashed golden, and the barrier fell as she lowered her head toward him, opening her great gaping maw.

“Fire in the cockpit!” the radio sang.

“Shit,” Montgomery muttered the stony curse into her radio. “EVACUATE NOW!”

He heard the words, but could not act, his gloves nearly gone, the hair on the backs of his hands singed. His feet did not budge; the soles of his boots had melted to the floor. The searing edge of orange inched up his sleeves.

The control panels turned black as the aircraft powered down with barely a sound, and the world went white.

 

+++

 

Shiro trailed behind, slowly climbing the steps into the maw of the Blue Lion. The pounding in his head escalated to a percussive beat. He thought he could hear her, as he drew further in, full of praise and encouragement, warmth, and buoyant love.

But something had gone gravely wrong. Her agonized roar echoed through his skull and was answered thrice. Black, and who else?

He clutched the railing with both hands, his prosthetic glowing hot.

The ghost of a fifth, anguished cry, reverberated after the other four had died. This one asked neither for Lance nor him.

“ _Keith!”_

“KEITH!” he bellowed, in echoing reply, mustering the force from his lungs.

The effort took his breath away.

“Shiro!” Hunk turned and rushed down the steps to catch him as he crashed to his knees, panting.

Rivulets of sweat streamed down his face as he clutched at his friend.

 

+++

 

The Red Lion called out, caressing his name with the sonorous notes of her voice, but another cried out with her, so clear. There was no mistaking it.

“Shiro?” Keith rasped, gulping for air. “SHIRO!”

Emergency lights flashed, and a high-pitched whine blared inside the cockpit. The numbers rolled down on the altimeter duct taped to the console. The plummeting force plastered him to the chair, but engine power had come back online. He grabbed the sticks and pulled back, hands slipping with slick perspiration as he struggled to right the craft.

It was over.

An image came through the comms screen, again with the static obscurity of an old television set, but the more he saw of the other pilot, the more he thought he recognized him, or something about him.

“Gotcha, Red.”

It was that voice, deep, grating, and taunting with a hint of deferential respect.

Sendak.

Keith had somehow managed to push that one off his radar yet here was Shiro’s ex, chasing him over New Mexico in an alien aircraft.

He found the scenario objectively comic and subjectively annoying. On the other hand, there was no time like the present to run the craft through its courses, and he might as well have some fun before heading back to base.

“Kogane!” the radio barked. He turned it off.

Peering directly into the comms screen, he lifted up his visor and winked.

 

+++

 

Lying awake, all Shiro could think about was Keith. What was he doing? Was he all right? What had he wanted to say when he’d called that instead was cut short by such terse final words?

_“I’ve got to go.”_

He should have just kept his mouth shut, but he was still a person, with hopes and dreams, desires. Feelings. If he could talk to Keith about that, then there wasn’t much left to say. No, he decided, he’d wanted to say it, to tell him.

So why this much regret?

“What do you think, Red?” he asked the cat curled up on his chest, a tiny ball of radiant heat, motor running, throbbing with each rise and fall of her chest. Shiro tugged the blanket up around her, stretching his legs, feet hanging over the side of the cushions and getting cold. Unable to turn or move for fear of disturbing the cat, he continued to stare at the ceiling of the camper. He and Hunk had put it back up together for Keith’s birthday surprise one of those nights he was supposed to have gone to his therapist, leaving Keith alone with an incorrigible black cat and a laptop full of aliens.

The thought should have made him smile, but he only felt sadder. This wasn’t right; only he couldn’t identify the exact point of the deviation. It was like the Mandela effect; at some indeterminate point in the spectrum of time, Universe E struck Universe A head-on in a collision that barely registered as a blip on the radars of all the physical beings involved. They only began to figure it out when they decided to compare notes, but they had to pick a topic first. His therapist called it false memory, but as a person of very few memories, he’d take them all, even the fake ones.

Many things occurred to him at once. Could his entire existence be a fabricated lie? Did Keith exist at all, or was he, in fact, laying down in his own NASA Airstream because he wanted so badly to-

To what?

With creaking joints, he gently shifted onto his side and sat up, still mindful of the temperamental cat who had decided he was her property. He folded the afghan and trudged down the hall to Keith’s bedroom. It barely felt lived in, but the nightstand held a scattering of coins, sunglasses, and a can that had at one time contained corned beef hash sat on a coaster, full of cigarette butts. A pair of jeans hung over the hamper, and an empty glass sat on the corner of the tiny bureau. Because this was Keith’s bed, he was surprised to find the sheets tightly secured beneath the mattress with perfect, pleated corners and the duvet folded back at the foot of the bed. Shiro stepped out of his pants and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it onto his pile. He rubbed his still aching limb before turning out the light, climbing in, and covering himself for hibernation, the cat leaping up silently after him, crawling all the way down under the covers to his feet, turning around and finally re-emerging, head on the pillow beside him.

Cat.

Lion.

Oh, right, Lion. It didn’t seem to matter in comparison, though he considered that an incredibly selfish thought on his part. Past the golden eyes and shield, the Blue Lion had allowed them inside but remained otherwise inert. Lance had been a pinnacle of grave compassion, without the exaggerated emotion he was often wont to display. She must have spoken to him, probably after he’d crossed himself and uttered an awe-struck “Madre de Dios.”

Shiro curled up around Red, who pushed herself into him, soundless, though he felt her warm breath beside him.

Only when the gravel crunch of tires broke the night did she move, gingerly hopping off the bed and sprinting away. Several minutes passed before he heard it followed by the fall of tired footsteps, the slap of the unlocked door, and the hiss of a cigarette snuffed out in the sink.

Shiro dared nothing, deeming it part of this constructed delusion where his lover returns. Keys clattered on the counter, a wallet. Something heavy fell. He felt it reverberate from the floorboards. Helmet, maybe? He listened to the soft clatter of rubber-soled boots dropped beside the door followed by light padding toward the bedroom and the creak of the screen as it slowly moved aside.

He cracked a lid. Slender physique, strong shoulders, a mess of unruly hair. Shiro exhaled relief, rolling over onto his back and relaxing into the memory foam as if it were about to swallow him up. Despite his size, he thought it just might.

Like a zombie, Keith shambled toward the bed, face-planting beside him with a loud huff, overcome with exhaustion. This was absolutely real. In no fantasy of his did Keith ever show up in field fatigues smelling like the concept of a shower hadn’t yet been invented.

_Thank God._

Shiro heaved himself up on an elbow, and ever so gently reached over to brushing aside Keith’s dusty hair, fingers trailing along the conch of his ear and drifting down his neck. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to take Keith up in his arms and open the floodgates. Instead, he pushed it all down and buried it in the depths of his uncluttered heart along with all the worry, the sorrow, fear of not knowing, powerless to do anything at all.  His weakness lay bare right here and now, in this bed, wondering if the care he’d dedicated solely to Keith had been an egregious misplacement of emotional energy. How wrong he’d gotten the message when he’d thought the feeling mutual. “I missed you.”

Keith rolled over, Shiro’s hand dragging across several days of stubble and chapped lips. “You weren’t home.”

The off-the-cuff, matter-of-fact delivery stung like an accusation, and yet he’d gone there first. Of course, he had, he’d left his bike there.

 _That’s not what he said. You, Shiro. He specified_ you _._

Shiro could barely make out his features in the dark, sad and melancholic.

_Where have you been? What happened out there?_

Instead of asking the things he knew he’d get no answer to, he said, “Come on, let’s get you out of those clothes at least.”

Keith mutely complied, and only when divested of everything he’d had on did he collapse again. As far as Shiro could discern, the scar on his shoulder was gone entirely, as if it had never existed. He felt the spot, expecting a raised line of tissue, but the flesh was smooth as if the explosion had never happened.

“It’s good to have you back,” Shiro whispered, trying not to think about how strangely Keith healed and recovered, pulling him in, holding him so close their two hearts thrummed together, a discordant tune.

 _I love you!_ Shiro wanted to scream. Those words had been denied in no uncertain terms. If he said them now, he was sure Keith would disappear altogether. He’d never felt so connected as he had when he’d heard the lions: Red, Blue, Black, Green, and Yellow, as when he’d reached out and called Keith’s name.

From wherever he’d been, Keith had answered back.

And yet, he knew that as far as _they_ were concerned, Keith was not afraid to walk away.

That might have been the one cowardly thing Shiro thought he might do. Funny how the action changed with the words. It took more courage to stay and go on than it ever did to leave. He’d thought he’d had a chance, that he’d found a way through that labyrinthine fortress. By his own admission, Keith felt _something_.

How could someone so volatile not? Granted, he’d only ever seen it directed, but it was still there, very much alive, red-hot, boiling just beneath the surface and ready to cut loose.

Keith fell asleep almost immediately, breathing deeply in place of the cat. Shiro inhaled the unmistakable scent of nicotine, cinnamon, and days of sweaty exertion, but also recognized a sweet, heady, burnt odor that permeated his skin and hair.

_What did they make you do?_

Until now, Shiro had never really made the connection, but at this very moment, it occurred to him that the only time Keith ever looked at peace was when he slept. His relaxed features uncovered a certain softness, a vulnerability that played over the dewy heat of his flesh and each beat of breath through his parted lips.

Shiro traced the contours of his face as if memorizing his features anew.

In the morning, he awoke with a start. Alone. The pale champagne morning poured over the ivory duvet. He must have imagined the previous night and covered his head with the sheet. He wondered where the cat had gone and listened for the sounds of sunrise but couldn’t hear the world awaken over the spray of the shower on the other side of the bedroom divide.

Shower?

Peering out and looking at the other side of the bed, he saw the dusty imprint on the pillow and the gritty spot where he had not imagined Keith curled up beside him. He needed his medication, sensing another twinge, this time in his phantom hand that made him consider a trip to the doctor.

This might be the scenario where he lost his mind.

Was there anything left to lose?

Keith ambled into the room, a towel wrapped like a turban around his head and yawning, as if he hadn’t been gone for nearly three weeks, like nothing uncomfortable had passed between them. Only the calculating still in his eyes betrayed all that.

“I made some coffee. Pidge found something she wants to show us.” Keith rubbed his face, yawned, and then, with a mischievous grin, he grabbed the covers and yanked them away, leaving Shiro very much exposed.

“Noooooo!” He buried his head ostrich-style beneath his pillow.

“Yes!” Keith jumped on the bed and lay down on top of Shiro, all hundred and barely thirty pounds of him. He slipped his hands beneath Shiro’s chest, squeezing and pressing his cheek into one rugged shoulder blade. “Believe me; I’d rather stay here.”

_“With you.” That is what he means, right?_

 

+++

 

Keith slid into the bench beside Hunk, leaving Shiro to cram himself in with Pidge and Lance. The Denny’s wait staff had let them drag over a table and two chairs for Allura and Coran, still absent.

“Good job,” Keith said, reaching across the table to bump fists with Lance.

“Oh! Yeah! Thanks!” Lance brightened at the praise. “But what now? Blue said she doesn’t have-”

“Enough quintessence,” Keith finished.

Lance nodded slowly, eyeing him carefully.

“Right.” Pidge stared at them, absently scrolling through something on her tablet.

“Don’t ask.” Keith hoped it would be enough, at least for now until he figured out how to tell them about Sendak. “The last few weeks were pretty rough.”

“He’s not going to say anything. I’ve already tried.” Shiro sulked, reading over the menu. Keith didn’t know why he bothered. He always ordered the same thing. It probably just gave him something to do.

Pidge hmmphed. “Well, anyway, I picked up a signal while you were gone. About a week ago, I, uh, thought I heard something outside,” She sucked down about a quarter of her shake, staring intently at the frothy head. “But, nothing was there, and it felt weird, you know like someone was talking to me, only they were inside my head.

“Oh, just spit it out already.” Lance threw up his hands in exasperation, nearly catching Pidge in the face as she threw up an arm to block the accidental flail. “Keith hears voices all the time, don’t you?”

The accusation grated, but wasn’t wrong; he’d heard the Green Lion same as he had Blue. Keith dug his fingers into the Formica at the edge of the table.

_Just let it go. He only does it because he knows you’ll react._

“Yeah, like me, sure. Or how about like you? Out in the desert a few days ago looking for the Blue Lion?”

“Well, yes,” Lance conceded. “Look,” he said to Pidge, kinder this time. “We’re all on the same page here.”

Pidge inhaled through her teeth. “I picked it up, but I couldn’t get a good read, so I went out to your, uh, mobile outpost and borrowed your equipment. This one was harder to pinpoint than the signal we traced before, I had to hijack some satellites, but it seems to be coming from Venus.”

“Venus?” Allura said, shrugging off her jacket and sitting at the table beside Keith.

Past her, on the other side of the diner, someone turned to watch. Keith couldn’t make out the person’s features for the hood pulled down over their face.

Coran took his position opposite her, leaning in across Shiro to Pidge. “That makes perfect sense though, see Venus-”

“Don’t you dare tell me it makes sense because I’m a girl.” Pidge interrupted.

“I second that,” Allura said wearily.

“No, actually.” Coran held up one spindly finger for silence, “See, Venus used to have a moon, well hypothetically speaking, of course. It was Cassini who first saw a ‘natural satellite’ in 1672, and it was viewed many times until the 1770s, after which it hasn’t been seen since.” He paused for breath before continuing, “I’ve been saying for years that what those astronomers saw was, in fact, the Green Lion. She’s the only one with cloaking.”

“She told me!” Pidge nodded enthusiastically. “I already looked up the Venusian moon.” She pulled a satchel out from under the table and removed a binder. Shuffling through to a section of Post-it-marked pages, she set it down and pushed it toward the center of the table. Enlarged images of a strangely crescent-shaped object hung in orbit around the planet. “These were from three days ago. This,” she flipped a page, “is a woodcut I pulled off Wikipedia.”

“They don’t look that different,” Shiro said, sliding the binder closer for a better look.

“Yeah. She can’t stay hidden as long as she used to be able to though. Her quintessence reserves are running dry.”

Past Allura, the figure Keith had spotted earlier shifted in their seat, their dining companion leaning over across the table, burly and craggy, with those poorly frosted purple tips Keith hadn’t ever quite managed to forget. He nudged Shiro under the table, tilting his head ever so slightly to the guests on the opposite side of the restaurant. Leaning well past Coran, Shiro stared and Keith kicked him again.

“Don’t be so obvious.”

Coran and Hunk followed Shiro’s lead, Allura glancing over, then turning back toward the table resting her face on her propped up palm.

Keith audibly sighed.

Clearing her throat, Allura made a grab for the binder. “We’ll have to fetch the lion,” she said, flipping through the assembled notes and images.

“Sure,” Keith replied, testily, “And how do you propose we do that?”

“Right?” Hunk seconded, “I mean, Lance woke Blue, but couldn’t get her out of the cave. Shiro couldn’t even get past Black’s barrier. Are we even certain the Black Lion is his?”

“Hey!” Shiro protested.

“He has a valid point.” Pidge shrugged and stirred her shake, pulling the cherry out and popping it in her mouth before returning to her screen.

“I heard her,” Shiro said, at the same time as Keith.

“She called his name!”

“I’m pretty sure she’s Shiro’s,” Allura confirmed. “We should double check the location of Green, but then we’ll need to figure out how to get there. You’ll need to make the connection, Pidge.”

It occurred to Keith that he’d first heard of the Green Paladin when the Blue Lion had called him out to the desert. He wondered if Blue had called Pidge too, or if that had all been signal hunting by an avid hobbyist. If Pidge hadn’t heard her, had the Green Lion then reached out to Blue? He’d wondered why the Blue Lion hadn’t known her own Paladin sooner.

Then again, she’d picked Lance, and there was no accounting for taste.

Green would want to be careful anyway if the Galra ship was as close as the moon.

“So, how do you plan to get us to that lion?” Keith posed the question to Allura and Coran, snorting back a derisive laugh. “I was under the distinct impression that our resident aliens’ spaceship was broken. Please don’t tell me this is another case-”

Allura pushed her chair back, brows knit together in vehement protest as she opened her mouth, but Coran quickly stopped her, extending his arm across the table before Keith could also react. “It’s dead in the desert.”

“Wait a sec,” Lance leaned across Shiro, “don’t you have lifeboats or escape pods or something? Haven’t you used those before?”

“They’re called ‘rescue craft’ for a reason,” Allura answered. “There isn’t enough power to get outside Earth’s gravitational pull.”

Keith stopped listening, instead hailing the negligent wait staff to order a drink. He wanted something smart and stiff like Maker’s neat but the diner wasn’t that type of establishment, and so he ordered an unsweetened iced tea instead.

He needed to figure this out, all of it, especially the part involving Shiro. He was good at not thinking, having just spent nearly three weeks doing mostly that aside from one very rushed phone call, but as soon as he’d been ushered out the door with a pat on the back and a dismissive “good job,” it had all come rushing back. He could have pushed back harder not to go, but he genuinely enjoyed the work, and he was good at it. He’d built his reputation on that. A part of him wanted to be there. Akira Kogane could fly anything.

 

_“It’s a shame to see such talent wasted, but I have no choice. If you don’t resign, you will be discharged. It’s up to you.”_

 

That was a memory he could have done without. Too much thoughtlessness had led him to that place. Never again.

Shiro grounded him. He recognized that, staring at his hands folded on the table in front of him.

How many more chances would he have before it was too late? Why did the risk seem too high?

He thought about his family. There was the mother he’d never known, who probably hadn’t wanted him. His father had lost his mind, succumbing to fits of fiery rage and after an incident during which the neighbors had called the police, Keith had been carted away to the hospital and his old man arrested on charges of neglect and abuse. He’d lost three fingertips to a door slammed shut. They’d all grown back, but that was nothing particularly unique so long as the root of the nail bed remained intact, and his father had been equally upset. Splaying his fingers out before him, his hands still looked like mirrors of each other. Perfectly normal human hands.

Why did that alien craft respond to _him_? It didn’t react to anyone else. Why?

And how had General Montgomery known that he’d be able to get it in the air?

Something bumped against the toe of his boot. Across the table, Shiro’s brow twitched.

_“Are you okay?”_

Sometimes he felt like two different people. No, he was not okay.

_Yes._

It didn’t sound convincing.

“But Coran,” Allura argued, “I can harness the quintessence. I could easily siphon it through the Paladins-”

“No!” Keith protested. The suggestion hit home with his thoughts full circle, and he grabbed the edge of the table again, so hard this time that the coating cracked as the material compressed beneath his grip. “Are you out of your mind? Look what happened to my dad!”

“Yes, but you took my energy into yourself, and you’re no more ornery than you ever were!” she retorted.

Shiro side-eyed her, “Would he know?” he asked, then glancing at Keith, “Would you?” He cracked his shoulders back and leaned in on his elbows. “Would any of us? We should listen to our own conversation. We’re talking about alien spacecraft, electromagnetic fields, and energy transfer. We sound absolutely mad.”

“Keith?” Pidge tore her head suddenly away from her distraction, hit with the birth of an idea.

He hummed, listening, giving her the platform of his full attention.

“I bet the military keeps spacecraft at that base north of Santa Fe?”  She put on her dramatic narrator voice, “rumored to house facilities for extraterrestrial use including technological development and genetic experimentation on human beings.”

“What?” Lance’s eyes widened with incredulity.

“ It’s all over those alien conspiracy documentaries,” After a pause, she pushed her frames back up her nose and added, “Weren’t you just there, Keith?”

He forced a tense shrug, the muscles taut across his back and neck.

“That a yes. That’s _definitely_ a yes.” Hunk intoned lowly beside him, watching something across the room.

Keith peered past him to the reflection in the window glass beside their table. The pair he’d spotted earlier watched them. “So you’re suggesting we go to an alleged military base that may or may not house alien spacecraft out in New Mexico when we live practically next door to Area 51?”

“I-” Her hesitation tore through the dim din of ambient conversation. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been keeping tabs on our airspace activity. I don’t think the craft the Air Force is keeping at Groom Lake is space-worthy. This is just where they keep the artifacts and the bodies. Working vehicles have to be somewhere else.”

“That’s an interesting theory, Pidge.” Allura mused, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of her lip.

Shiro still watched him from across the table.

“Where are you going with this?” Keith asked, despite already knowing the answer.

“Me? You’re the one with the connections. Borrow us a spaceship.” Pidge blinked and lifted her glasses to rub at her eyes, bloodshot and weepy, from a likely lack of sleep.

Coran laughed, “And how do _you_ propose he do that, young Paladin, just walk right in and ask for it, hmm?”

“’Young Paladin?’” Keith scoffed, “What have you been smoking, old man?”

With a Cheshire grin, Coran twisted his mustache, “Better leaf than you, boy.”

Keith shook his head dismissively as he watched the two figures approach.

_Finally._

Shiro shrank in his seat, so tense, Keith expected him to sublimate.

The swagger in Sendak’s step didn’t help. “Takashi Shirogane. From the look of you, it hasn’t been long enough.” He thumped his fists on the table. Forks and knives shuddered at the jolt. Allura ground her teeth as she stood up, haughtily tossing her hair and crossing her arms over her chest with a disapproving scowl cutting through her usually diplomatic expression.

Sendak paid her no heed, edging his face in, lips quirked up in amusement as his eyes carved through the dense air to Keith. “You still have your _accessory_ , as well, I see-“

His companion jerked him back by the neck of his leather jacket up and off the table. While Sendak was tall, this man stood even taller; his long pale hair trailed over his chest from the hood where he peered out with violet eyes that pierced the stony quiet elicited by his presence.

The wind caught in Sendak’s lungs and he struggled to breathe.

“Apologies for my companion’s regrettable impertinence.” His voice rang clear, a placating, mellifluous song, but also demanding.

Allura frowned, tapping her foot impatiently, mouth curving deeper with each fleeting second.

His trim, streamlined physique matched his elegant movements and the cultivated intonation of his words. Keith decided immediately that the man could not be trusted.

Shiro narrowed his eyes to dark slits, his mouth a thin line that cut across his face.

“What planet is _he_ from?” Lance leaned inelegantly over the tabletop, running his tongue over his teeth.

The stranger turned toward him. “Well, if you want to be specific-”

“Who are you?” Keith demanded.

“Yeah!” Lance echoed, deciding to back him up.

Before the man could respond, Allura thrust her hand toward him, palm up, “this is the illustrious, _excommunicated,_ half-breed son of the Galran ‘Emperor,’” she mocked, pulling the quotation marks from the air with graceful tapered fingers, her lacquered nails sparkling in the incandescent light.

“Don’t use slurs to describe people,” Keith grumbled, irritated and made to stand.

“Dissent amongst the ranks?” the stranger observed.

Allura reached out cautiously, still fixed on the man. Light and warm, her fingertips grazed the back of Keith’s hand. “He’s not a person, Keith.”

“Don’t use it,” Keith repeated, feeling at once world-weary and too old to tolerate the prejudice. Biracial was fine, hapa okay even - for himself, but mongrel and half-breed were even worse than the perennial question, “What are you?” Even if she had meant to cite two separate species, which seemed unlikely, hybrid was a better term.

The tall man leveled with her. For the flash of an instant, Keith felt certain he wanted to lash out, saw the tightness around his mouth, the sheer potential of his graceful feline form. Even beneath the layers of clothing, the pilled black hoodie under a worn leather jacket, it was easy enough to see the expansion and contraction of his thews like smoothly oiled pistons, every movement lithe and almost sensual. When he opened his mouth to speak again, Keith swore he caught a hint of extra teeth, not in the typical haphazard way they tended to manifest in humans, but like his own, lined up behind the canines, longer, slightly crowded.

“Whoa, hold on here.” Hunk slid across the bench, but Keith refused to move and let him out. “Are you saying this guy-”

“Yes, Hunk.” Allura began. “Don’t worry about him.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Keith watched them, sensing the heat radiate off the stranger’s body, the building compression of energy waiting to be released. He almost found it attractive.

Shiro glowered, staring first at the long-haired specimen, then shifting his focus over to Sendak who remained committed to scrutinizing Keith with his hard set jaw and tightly folded arms.

“Oh come now, dear princess,” the tall man deferred with a nod of his head. “I’ve been trying to get in touch, for some time now. Word on the street is you found your Paladins.” He swept his gaze around the table, stopping at Shiro.

The man had Keith’s full attention. Keith felt it slough off him like a second invisible skin, pure, refined quintessence, honed like Allura’s but not contained.

“Is that your Red Paladin?” the man asked, peering at Shiro as he planted his palms flat against the tabletop and inclined his head forward. The yellow light of the overhead fixture reflected off his sclera and imparted an almost lilac cast to his wan visage.

Shiro stared impassively back.

“No,” Allura replied simply.

“Then which one is it?”

“I told you already,” Sendak growled.

“You need to shut up,” the stranger clipped back.

“It’s me,” Keith said, raking his hair away from his face and placing himself strategically in front of the man where he could also keep tabs on Sendak to the protests of the table and Allura’s smug smirk. He lifted his shoulders, palms to the air. “Better to get it out now, so there’s no confusion later.”

The tall man stared at Keith, down the slope of his aquiline nose, with slanted eyes, sharp and cunning. Curling his lip, he grabbed Keith under the jaw, pressing his fingers tightly in, while he rubbed his thumb beneath the ridge of a mandible.

Keith remained perfectly still, a specimen allowing the examination knowing he could end it at any time. To this person, it was a game, and he understood that much, even without knowing the rules of engagement. Allura looked on with wry amusement. Keith wouldn’t deal with it yet, but he would, fists curled loosely at his sides, thumbs tucked in, and rage at the indignity boiling just beneath the placid surface of his blank expression.

Shiro held his breath, waiting.

“What kind of a joke are you playing? Allura, this can’t possibly be the Red Paladin.” The man tossed his hair, his silvery platinum mane falling back over his shoulders like the mantle of a king. A rough examiner, however, the stranger ran his free hand through Keith’s thick dark hair, pulling it away from his face in a fist. Deep violet eyes grazed the contours of Keith’s neck and shoulders with a hunger that rode the fine line of curiosity and desire.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she replied.

Coran stood to stop him, but Sendak stepped between, eye set knowingly on Keith.

What was it Shiro had said about why Sendak was there? It seemed so long ago and usually his memory was good with the details, but he just could not dredge it up. What was it?

The man pressed his face in closer, nearly cheek to cheek, and breathed in deeply.

Keith squeezed his eyes tightly shut then opened them again to clear his vision. He forced his body to relax as the man pulled back. There it was, the small crevice between snowy white brows, marking first recognition, followed by cogitation, and finally confusion.

_Weapons._

_Voltron._

“Keith?” Shiro murmured, barely more than a whisper, standing abruptly. The table skidded forward, pinning Hunk in as he shoved his way out, smoldering as he met Sendak chest to chest. Standing at they were, Keith realized for the first time that they were nearly matched in height. Shiro flexed his mechanical fingers, the soft whirr barely audible.

_Don’t._

Neither quite so big or defined, Shiro remained a creature of dread prowess and immutable control. He was still _there_ , but what would it take to push him over that edge?

Lance slid out of the bench, followed closely by Pidge and Hunk, upon freeing himself.

Allura sneered. “You should be able to tell who it is, Lotor.”

_Quintessence?_

“He just looks so, oh, I don’t know, _fragile_ ,” Lotor said, pressing his thumb against Keith’s lips.

That was enough. With the slightest movement, he had the tip of that thumb between his teeth and bit down. Hard.

The man didn’t move.

_“Go on.”_

He _heard_ and could not resist the challenge. He ground his canines through the bone and gristle, ignoring the hard grunt of pain. He watched the tendons pull against the man’s neck and eyes harden to small chips of amethyst as he severed the first joint.

Blood dripped off his chin as he chewed, drops of garnet dribbled onto the tile floor. He hoped Joy wouldn’t be the one stuck cleaning up this mess.

Allura swallowed hard but watched all the same, expression unchanging.

Suddenly green in the face, Lance turned away and covered his mouth. Hunk gagged, Shiro shrank back in his seat and Pidge watched in fascination.

Keith pulled out the nail and flicked it away. The fingertip tasted terrible.

Lotor tucked his ruined thumb into his fist, face pale, but with a curiously satisfied look on his face.

_Everyone bleeds the same._

Why wasn’t he upset?

Finished, Keith shot the bone back out between his lips like spitting a seed. It hit square in the center of Lotor’s chest than clattered to the floor.

“Don’t ever touch me again.”

_“You just told me everything I needed to know.”_

Keith was sure he had not imagined that.

Bolting through the doors, he sucked in the crisp night air through his teeth. He couldn’t hear for all the noise inside his head, but that would subside. He bent over, hands above his knees, trying to ground himself when he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

He whipped sharply around with an irascible fury, “I said, don’t touch me!”

_Shiro._

Yet he couldn’t stop. Slipping into autopilot Keith dropped into a low, guarded stance, digging his fingers into Shiro’s chest and grabbing his collar, pulling him in close on the element of surprise.

The shock lasted only a moment before Shiro twisted his hand around Keith’s arm and raised his prosthetic as if to strike at the same moment Keith thrust forward with the strange blade manifest in his fist.

The honed metal edge pressed into Shiro’s throat as the mechanical hand blazed fuchsia beneath his chin. Heat, like embers struggling back to life, weak at first, then stronger, flared then dissipated into the air.

Both of them held their breaths, staring at each other.

 _I guess you really can do it._  

Keith’s mouth ticked up. He wanted to, to see how far he could push, overcome by a sudden, sick curiosity to reach the limits of Shiro’s bounds.

He knew he was close.

Droplets of perspiration prickled through the hair above Shiro’s ears and trailed down the sides of his face.

Keith hadn’t broken a sweat.

_Champion, huh?_

It wasn’t the epiphany though. That came a split-second later when he asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing?

Keith pulled the knife away and stood up rail-straight, refusing to break eye contact. What did Shiro see now, Keith wondered. Shiro, too, stepped back, the light dimming from his hand like the final pulse of a firefly succumbed to the parching heat of summer’s end. Terror, wrath, a fathomless sadness that manifested from a deeply rooted self-loathing. Those things bubbled up to the surface and Keith could not see through them.

As for himself, he’d considered the deed and that was enough to push him just a little farther away. He hadn’t just startled and stopped when he’d seen it was Shiro and not Luthor, Lothot, or whatever that guy’s name was. Looking down at his hands, the gleaming blade of his dagger shimmered like a watery reflection in the moonlight. Veins stood proud over the backs of his hands, throbbing and blue. He’d never be better than this. An entire life spent struggling against it and he still couldn’t keep himself in check. It made him a liability, an unknown factor, the fine print at the very end of the terms and conditions. He’d once crushed a man’s oculus for less, severed the optic nerve and permanently blinded the eye.

He hadn’t meant to.

And like this now, that didn’t matter.

There was no one else to blame.

All his life he’d heard it from others, thrusting that accountability off on his crazy father, an absent mother, a system that had failed, poor public schools, class.

All of it, excuses.

Keith had none and he wanted none. He’d acted and reacted. He had laid his hands on Shiro and given consideration to the thought.

A part of him had wanted to follow through. It remained one of the simplest ways to force someone to leave; let him make the decision himself.

For his part, he’d been drawn to Shiro the moment he’d set eyes on him, like a moth to a flame, and he’d allowed himself to be similarly consumed. Shiro had a familiarity about him that Keth couldn’t place, something in the way he moved and breathed. Sometimes in the quiet of the night, after Shiro had finally fallen asleep, Keith would listen to the sound of his blood pumping through his heart. He heard it as the ocean through the chambers of a shell. It matched the maelstrom of Shiro’s black magnetic aura, the turbid surface of a dying star.

The truth, as he saw it, was that he would never be better than this.

_I’m sorry, Shiro._

Heavy footfalls approached from the front of the restaurant. Metal rattled and chinked, leather creaked. Keith spotted the figure from the corner of his eye. Lotor.

He turned away before he let his instincts get the better of him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes upon his back.

Nor could he avoid the chill that crawled up his skin when the sonorous, modulated voice spoke so lowly to Shiro. He strained to listen.

“So tell me, Starman, what _are_ you doing here?”

 

+++

 

Sharp knuckles rapped on the window glass then clanged across the shell of the camper to the door. Thankfully oiled, it opened smoothly and the person stepped inside.

One.

Two.

And crashed, tripping over something near the entry.

Keith groaned, climbing out of bed, stiff from a night of dead slumber. If he’d dreamed anything at all, he hadn’t remembered it. Scraping the sleep out of his eyes, he gnawed the salty rheum from his nails and shuffled out to greet the intruder. “If you break my guitar-”

“If you don’t want it broken, don’t leave it in front of the door. Are you trying to booby trap the place?” Allura picked herself up and sitting up on her heels handed him the unharmed instrument.

He set it on the table, trading it for a cigarette. “Do you make a habit of breaking and entering?”

“I thought you’d mind the uninvited visit more.” She stood, brushing the dust off her fitted white jeans and peering around with sudden interest. “Is this really where you live?”

He lit his smoke, inhaling and immediately succumbed to a fit of coughing through the hitch of morning grogginess. Filter in hand, he braced himself over the sink. His entire body screamed at him to go back to bed. Usually, he didn’t sleep past sunrise, but the sun was already climbing above the horizon.

“You sound terrible.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Clearing his throat, he puffed on his cigarette and tied up his hair. Allura hadn’t figured into his expectations for the morning.

Indignantly, she replied, “My name isn’t- oh.”

Keith huffed through his nose. “What do you want?”

“We’re going to borrow a spaceship.”

“We?”

“Yes. Everyone is outside waiting for you. I tried to call, but… Shiro has your phone, which isn’t helpful. You know,” she looked down at her hands, “Sendak said something interesting after you took off last night. He said, ‘that’s the one you need to be careful with. Everything else will resolve itself. The universe just needs some time to catch up.’ Do you know what he might have meant?”

“No. Honestly, I’m amazed we didn’t have a full-out confrontation.”

“The diner is neutral territory.”

He laughed.

“Anyway, I made a few phone calls and rented a van. We’ll be briefed when we arrive. It’s going to be a long day.”

“I’m staying here.”

“You know you can’t just hide and expect all your problems to disappear.”

“Actually, I can.”

“Don’t be so self-centered. This isn’t just about you.”

She had a point, but then why did it feel that way?

Reluctantly agreeing to go along for the ride, Keith washed his face and threw on some clothes. He climbed into the rented van, accepting the offering of a lukewarm coffee from Pidge. Between a dubious Hunk, a Lance roused too early from his precious slumber, and a listless Shiro, the seating options were limited. Pidge made just enough space between herself and Shiro for Keith to wedge himself in.

Every time they touched, Shiro shrank closer to the window.

_I’d be scared of me too._

Keith could only make himself so small. He still couldn’t force himself to look Shiro in the eyes.

He wanted to apologize, but “sorry” was one of those words that played on extremes. It could either be full of sincere remorse or bereft of all heart. It remained a hollow word without action to back it up, and Keith had already proven beyond a doubt that his commitment to isolation and alienation trumped everything else.

_You really fucked this one up good._

Knees bent up against the seat in front of him, the world streaked by. He attempted to feign apathy, but it didn’t last. Coran was driving and had already been sucked into the throes of a heated argument over navigation, refusing to accept assistance from anyone else.

Another few minutes and he demanded Coran pull over to let him drive before the oubliette of his darkest thoughts devoured him completely.

Lance snored through a nap of several hours, drooling on Hunk’s shoulder. Shiro remained silent, as did Pidge and Coran. Only Allura had tried to make conversation, eventually giving up when he had nothing to say back.

Keith didn’t want to talk to her. Or anyone, really. His gut had told him to stay home. He should have listened. Instead, he had been overwhelmed by the exuberant voices of the lions begging him to go. With a little concentration, he’d been able to pull out Green’s lilting thread from the others, focusing on the frequencies defining her speech. Blue tried to comfort, but she was no replacement for the Red Lion.

Raising his eyes to the rearview, he caught Shiro watching him before looking away, fixing on some point outside the window. Leaning back, Shiro hunkered down, frowning with his arms crossed tightly, shirt puckering at his armpits and over his cleavage.

Well after sunset, he pulled up to the first of several security checkpoints. He had been here just two days prior. Allura practically climbed over him, flashing a badge at the guard, who placed a phone call and directed them to a part of the compound Keith had not yet seen.

Winking at Keith, she popped the collar on her jacket and adjusted her scarf.

He only hoped she wouldn’t be getting them into even more trouble than they had likely already caused. Eventually, they made their way underneath the mountain where a petty officer directed him to park and ushered them into the building, through two tiers of security, and into a small break room.

“I guess they don’t receive too many visitors here,” Hunk remarked, pacing the perimeter.

Keith hoisted himself up on the counter, away from the awkward discomfort of the group.

“No, you can push him. He’s not my responsibility!” a familiar voice barked from outside the room.

“Kaasan?” Shiro rubbed his eyes when the door opened.

“Mariko? Dad? Hey! What are you doing with my Dad?” Keith addressed the officer pushing his father’s wheelchair into the cramped room. His brows shot up and his lip curled before he could school his features back to a placid calm.

“Takashi!” Mariko blinked and brushed her hair back from her face, collecting her bearings.

Kogane senior scanned the room, slowing his passage over Allura before going back to Shiro, squinting. “Piece of shit,” he mumbled.

“Don’t you dare talk about my son that way!” Mariko bent over Keith’s father, scolding, “You nasty old man! Didn’t I tell you if you have nothing nice to say, you keep your goddamn mouth shut?”

“Kaasan-” Shiro protested.

“What are you babbling on about, crazy woman? She’s got my boy!” Old man Kogane unearthed a crooked finger from the folds of his blanket and thrust it out several times toward Allura.

“Hey,” Lance said, draping himself over Keith’s rigid shoulders, “Is that really your dad?”

“Yes,” came his short reply.

“How old is he?”

“Sixty-something.” Keith shrugged

“He looks ancient,” Lance whispered.

“Quintessence exposure,” Allura replied.

“Excuse me.” Hunk said, and then louder when no one stopped to listen. “Excuse me, but will someone please explain what the hell is going on?”

General Montgomery stepped into the room, boot heels clicking on the laminate tiles.

“Miss Alforse.” Montgomery inclined her head, speaking with a stillness to silence the room as her voice rang out over the shrill clamor of the conversation. She filled the space with her slender form, a skill picked up from many years of making herself seem more significant than her diminutive stature.

Allura extended her hand. “Thank you for receiving us.”

“I have no choice.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Not long enough. A second battleship has joined the first on the dark side of the moon. We’ve taken some readings, and while the energy levels are extremely high, our instrumentation has been unable to identify the main components of the electromagnetic signature. I hope taking this chance on you won’t be a mistake this time.”

“It wasn’t a mistake last time.”

“Wasn’t it? The Galra insurgents pushed back the imperial forces, no thanks to you.” She sniffed and tugged at the cuffs of her uniform. “Anyway, given the options. I’m interested in seeing how these _Lions_ of yours perform.”

“They’re not her lions.” Keith blurted out, unable to stay silent. They weren’t things to assume ownership over.

General Montgomery opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, thinking, the muscles tightening up her neck and along her jaw. “I’ll send an officer to brief you all on this facility before we proceed further. I need a word with your pilot and my other two guests.”

“Keith,” Shiro breathed, the quiet nuance of inference mixed with renewed sympathy.

_We’re not going to talk about flying a spaceship, are we?_

Mariko Shirogane stared wide-eyed at General Montgomery. She sucked her lips in over her teeth and ran a hand through her hair, mussing the perfect bob before tucking a stray lock behind her ear.

“Kogane, Dr. Shirogane, Captain,” the General commanded, bidding them follow and dismissing the officer that had accompanied them before pivoting on her heel and making her way briskly down the hall.

Keith hopped off the counter and followed swiftly behind, not waiting to see what lay across the faces of his companions

“Keith!” Mariko called after him with enough force to stop him in his tracks. “You come back here right now and push your father.”

“I’m not his nursemaid.”

“ _I_ am not his son.”

 

+++

 

The general shut the door to her office, sweeping an arm toward the chairs in front of her desk inviting them to sit as she did the same.

Keith had never been in there before and looked around, bookcases lined the shelves and identical, legal size manila folders sat in precisely arranged stacks at the edge of the solid oak desk.

Montgomery clasped her hands together and leaned forward on her elbows, pressing her tight lips into her fingers.

“He doesn’t know, does he?” Mariko’s face went pale with comprehension, and she backed into a bookcase, gripping a shelf behind her for stability.

“It’s never mattered before.”

“What are you talking about?” Keith interrupted.

His father made a strangled choking sound, bursting out in an absurdly comical giggle.

“Did he really need to be here?” Mariko asked, turning her pitied gaze on Kogane Sr. as she finally sat down in the empty seat between him and Keith.

“Captain Kogane has some value yet, I think.”

Taken aback and wholly nonplussed, Keith twisted in the old leather chair, leaning over the arm. “What is this about?” he asked Mariko.

Before she could answer, General Montgomery pulled one stack of folders off her desk and shoved it at Keith, who nearly let it fall in a momentary lapse of motor skill.

“Just read through that.” Shiro’s mother patted his hand and squeezed, her fingers cold but her grip firm.

For several very long minutes, Keith stared at the files in his lap, most of them dog-eared and worn, the spines reinforced with dried out green linen tape. The adhesive cracked when he handled them, dusting his jeans with the debris. A title card on the first folder, typed on a typewriter, read: TRANSFECTION OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL PLASMID DNA INTO THE HUMAN GENOME. He flipped to the second, DEVELOPMENT OF MITOCHONDRIAL COMPATIBILITY IN SPECIMEN X9Y-005. The third, PROTOCOL FOR RECONFIGURATION OF ALIEN GENES FOR INSERTION INTO HUMAN mRNA.

_What is this?_

He went to the next, and the next.

GENETIC COMPONENTS OF SPECIMEN X9Y-005.

That one.

He kept it as he set the rest of the files back on the edge of Montgomery’s desk. “Is this your work?” He asked, gripping the file with both hands, staring at the red stamp, “Majestic.” In any other fictional tale noir he would have instead expected the label to read, “Top Secret,” unless of course, it dealt with aliens.

Aliens.

Not that he found this at all remarkable. Keith’s reality had a knack for being excessive.

“Most of it,” Mariko replied. “I left the project in ‘79. My replacement didn’t survive your mother.”

“My-”

“Don’t you sully her memory with your vicious insinuations!” Kogane Senior groused from the other side of Mariko, leaning forward and jabbing at her arm with his gnarled hand.

Keith could feel the blood rushing from his face. He had a mother. For the very first time in his cognitive memory, his father spoke of her with something more than the perfunctory, “She’s gone.” The old man spoke now with something more, a protective affection.

She promptly stood, scooted her chair closer to Keith, and sat back down, just out of reach, swinging her feet.

“Captain.” Montgomery leveled him with her icy glare. “Must I remind you that your precious beloved, or whatever your addled memory deems her, _ate_ Dr. Hedrick.”

He canted forward, elbows on his frail knees, and looked thoughtfully at his son, chewing on his lip, a dribble of saliva sliding down his chin. “He has her face.”

Montgomery merely nodded.

Keith opened the file. The very first page was a fact sheet. His fact sheet. Sitting there like the towel on the very top of the folded laundry, hiding the mismatched socks and underwear mixed in below. Paperclipped to it was his officer’s if-you-die-send-it-to-the-family portrait. He looked far too young to be wearing that uniform.

_Specimen X9Y-005._

He reminded himself that he had a father, sitting near him and apparently a mother, who had eaten a scientist working on this specific project. The surreality of this knowledge left him bereft of feeling. It was more of a curiosity. It made so many things come together in concrete clarity, why he had weird teeth, why he healed so strangely, why he could handle a 500-pound motorcycle as easily as Shiro could handle him. Perhaps this was the reason he could use that Galra air-, no, spacecraft and why he didn’t self-immolate under the duress of quintessence.

The notes summarized much of what he suspected the other files covered, that a genetic code had been developed from a human genome with alien genes spliced in. He didn’t need to see the details, although he was sure that if he asked, Shiro’s mom would tell him.

 

Approximate Percentages of Genetic Information by Species

50% - Homo Sapiens, Captain Akira Kogane

45.3% - Galran, Krolia

2.8% - Altean…

 

Keith shut the file, feeling like he’d just seen something he should not have been a part of. “So, basically, you made me.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make it sound so precise, General.” Mariko Shirogane swiveled in her seat, toe to the ground as she sat up. “The Human Genome Project was a bit contrived. We had this information much earlier from extraterrestrial visitors. I was recruited to work on this project, first isolating specific genes from various extraterrestrial species and then later introducing those genes into the human genome itself. The scientists who came after me were the ones responsible for developing that into a viable human embryo.”

Keith felt suddenly uncomfortable, though he couldn’t quite place why. “What does this mean exactly? Are there more of me, or, I mean, people like me? Did you want a super soldier or someone to bridge relations between all these different species-” He exhaled a heavy breath.

“There is definitely only one of you,” Mariko said.

“Thank your mother. She saw to that.” Montgomery squared up the piles of folders on her desk.

Mariko continued, “We were trying to imbue people with ultrasensory perception, a tangible empathy, if you will, a sense of oneness with the Earth-”

“Quintessence,” Keith finished. They stared at him and it occurred to him they really didn’t know whether or not it had worked.

“That’s what Allura calls it,” he added. “Show me the lab. I want to see where you made me and tell me about my mom. Who was she? What happened to her?”

“She left with the rest of the Galra insurgents. You were brought to term with a surrogate, but your mother wouldn’t have been able to carry you anyway. Her anatomy doesn’t work like that.” Montgomery answered, standing and clapping her hands together, ignoring Keith’s horrified expression.

“Wait. Anatomy?” Of course, aliens would have different anatomy.

Mariko stood and sifted through the stack of folders replaced just minutes ago, pulling one out and passing it to him. “All your contributors are in here. I tried very hard to make sure you had a human phenotype.”

Keith opened the file. “Is that a tentacle dick?”

Mariko giggled in spite of Montgomery’s scrutiny. “Not exactly... It wouldn’t do to have you running around…”

“Purple,” he finished, studying the set of photos labeled, “Krolia.”

 

+++

 

Mariko rubbed his back. “You’re not upset.”

“No. I know who I am. Nothing changes that.” He thought about it, how much he hated the insinuation he might be something other than human, whether or not in jest. He still hated it, but there was nothing he could do. “Although,” he added accusingly, “you could have made me taller.”

“Your father is- how do I put this delicately? He’s short.” She half hugged Keith as they followed General Montgomery to the flight deck. Her warmth touched him. Beneath a spray of some floral perfume, she smelt clean, of warm milk, and Cheerios. If this were what it was like to have a mom, he’d take it.

He certainly couldn’t keep Shiro’s mom.

Keith needed to put Shiro out of his mind.

“Why are you touching my boy?” Kogane senior tried to look over at them. “Get your filthy shit-stained paws off of him!”

“You don’t know the first thing about comfort!” She shot back.

“Don’t you dare, woman. I spent the first eight months of his life feeding his larval self formula every two hours because if I didn’t, he cried. I couldn’t put him down to take a shit without him busting his eyes and wailing until I picked him up again-”

“Dad?” Keith asked, seeing what he could get out of this lucid state. “How did you end up with me anyway? Aren’t I technically government property?” He was only half joking.

“No,” Montgomery replied. “I had this crazy idea that it would be much better for everyone to observe you as a member of society than to keep you locked up like a test subject in here, but when your father ran off with you, we lost track of you both.”

Captain Kogane blew raspberries in the air.

He thought about a life where the government had stepped in when his dad could no longer care for him. Had it even been considered? He thought he preferred it the way it was, chance and fate with no meddling.

“So, even when I decided to join-”

“We’d found you again when Captain - your father - lost it, but the project was already declared dead. Everything since has been all you.”

“Filthy coverups and dirty, dirty secrets,” the old man muttered. “Leaving him with you people would have been the biggest mistake of my life. Terrible.”

“See what thanks I get for involving my most capable, most intelligent stealth pilot in this fiasco.” Montgomery threw her hands up, picking up her pace.

“You people don’t know the first thing about raising children,” Kogane spat, a string of drool dangling off his chin.

“And you do?” she retorted. “He’s thirty years old and hardly what I would call a functional adult. Excellent job there, _sire_.”

“Don’t blame him for my shortcomings,” Keith shot back, surprised by his immediate defense of the old man.

_If I don’t defend you, who will?_

“We made you. It’s in your blood, regardless.”

“In my blood? Don’t make up excuses that take away my responsibility. You talk big about my agency and free will then load me down with this bullshit? I’m the only one accountable for my actions. Give me one time I haven’t been.”

He dared her to try. Or any of them. Even if he felt like he’d been caught up in the throes of emotional regression, he always took credit for what he’d done. Or not done.

The General flung wide the double doors at the end of the hallway. Keith pushed his father through, Shiro’s mom patting his hand as she let go to follow after.

Raking a hand through his hair, Keith glanced around, silent as he watched the group. He shifted his weight, then folded his arms loosely over his chest.

The flat little fighter hovered serenely in the center of the strip, and beside it, several armed officers guarded his companions. They’d changed into anti-g flight suits, similar to the old-fashioned ones from the 1950s that laced to fit up the rear to the lower back, sides, and legs. Black on black, they had already been personalized with individual nametape and color-coded patches in a stylized V matching the aura of their lions above their hearts and on their sleeves. Allura’s, like Coran’s, was white and instead of the American flag and Air Force insignia, a coat of arms he did not recognize had been stitched on above.

Lance fussed with his oxygen tank, stretching his legs, then his arms in bored impatience. Pidge had fallen asleep on a rolling staircase, and Hunk stood staring at the craft, making furious notes on a yellow pad. Shiro sat on a nearby crate, sullen, chin in his hand. His eyes lit up as they walked through the door but returned to passive calm almost immediately.

The base might have been on lockdown for how quiet it seemed. Everyone had been so interested when he’d been there just a few days prior.

The general checked her watch. “You have 21 hours. Do what you need to.”

“You’re just going to let me fly it out of here?”

“Yes. You’ll bring it back.”

_You have my dad and Shiro’s mom. Got it._

“Keith!” Allura called, approaching swiftly across the floor with a brown paper-wrapped package under her arm. She shoved it brusquely at him. “Get dressed. We already have to make up for lost time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun to write. I hope you enjoyed it too!
> 
> Let’s see, what else…  
> * When Shiro gets stressed, he drives a manual about as well as I do. I feel his pain.  
> * Oh yeah! Season 5 gave Keith’s mom a name and a face - that was fun! 
> 
> Also, I’ve been told to post my playlist for this fic. [Here!](https://open.spotify.com/user/kitty-maru/playlist/71OaXWPPFSgDaUDOD2G4XW) (You’re welcome, friend.)
> 
> Thank you for making it this far. Only four more chapters to go.


	11. Who Knows? Not Me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Traveling to space and what they found there. Action, adventure, and melodrama!

In a 1989 interview on KLAS-TV Las Vegas, a man using the pseudonym, “Dennis,” claimed to have been recruited by the U. S. Air Force to reverse engineer extraterrestrial propulsion systems at a site near the Area 51 Groom Lake testing grounds.Through media attention and subsequent controversy, this story was single-handedly responsible for putting Area 51 on the map.

The flying saucer remains the idealized and quintessential alien spacecraft. It hovers and jags through the air, making abrupt turns at angles no known man-made aircraft can. Purported theories on how they move through space include gravitational waves and stable, as-yet discovered isotopes of super-heavy elements, magnetic waves through the use of superconductors, or the manipulation of thrust inducing vortices, yet if any of these have been proven, that knowledge has not reached the public sphere.

The point being, that if one should go off cavorting with aliens in a craft that no one quite understands, be sure to have a solid Plan B or at least a good safe word.

 

+++

 

_Screaming in the face of imminent danger only makes you look scared or possibly unhinged._

 

+++

 

_“Now, let me explain a thing or three about how this works. A lot of things happen in the nucleus of an atom, but let’s focus on the forces for a moment. You have this sort of mosh pit where the protons are using their electrostatic force to push each other around, while the strong nuclear interaction of the neutrons acts as the gatekeeper, holding everything together and keeping it confined. Keep in mind that while the strong force is, in fact, the strongest force in the atom (hint, it’s in the name), it has a much shorter range of effectiveness than the electrostatic force. This means if you want to achieve a stable isotope of an element heavier than uranium, you need more neutrons to balance these forces. We’re talking serious atomic marriage counseling-”_

Shiro clapped the book shut. He had expected a text full of crack theories and little green men. Instead, he’d been presented with an entire chapter covering gravitational wave propulsion that had schooled him in particle physics.

The text spoke to him colloquially without being condescending, and Shiro did not doubt that if Keith had been blessed with the gift of patience, he’d have made an excellent teacher. Although he was also reasonably sure a veritable plethora of expletives had been carefully culled from the text, Shiro had a hard time wrapping his head around the realization that this tongue-in-cheek literary achievement was the creative product of the man he loved, even if this version seemed a stranger. From the last printed page of the book, Keith stared at him, wearing a suit - the suit - and tie, probably a clip-on, hair fighting against the conservative style, slicked back from his face and expertly tapered, the smallest hint of that familiar crooked smile on his lips. The bio struck Shiro as quaint: education, awards, and accolades followed by hobbies, likes, and a vague statement about life in the continental southwest.

Pidge had the right of it; Keith was deadpan funny, and Shiro had no reasonable explanation for why he hadn’t started to read sooner.

He sighed.

With his heart skinned and cored, Shiro felt like nothing more than an observer, watching this surreality unfold around him. He still wasn’t sure how he’d arrived at this point. Time and space had folded in on itself, unfolded and this new mess was suddenly his reality. At the very least, he wanted the previous night back. He had known better than to follow Keith out that door. All the signs had told him not to. Keith’s coping mechanisms were tenuous at best, but at the same time, he was afraid of what might happen if he didn’t. He’d been worried.

And Keith could be deliberately self-destructive. He’d already seen that once, how could he trust it might not happen again?

He’d much rather have Keith mad at him and alive than dead. Even if in that madness he lost.

Shiro continued to sit on the crate, where he had staked himself out when the staff sergeant had escorted them to the hangar.

Pidge had gone off with one of their babysitters, doing what he could only guess, while Hunk and Keith ran diagnostics on the craft. It had taken Shiro forever to locate Lance, wedged in between stacks of supplies and equipment on a shelf near the facility door, napping, the ultimate expression of “rack time.” His flight suit blended into the shadows; he might have been additional cargo.

Hunk jotted some notes onto his legal pad as he raced down the steps from the opened hatch. Spinning on his heel, he slowly backed away from the craft, taking her in. The navigation lights blasted through the enveloping darkness of the cavern hangar as the other nearby aircraft seemed to shrink away into the safety of niches and crevices of the mountain’s comfort. Moonlight poured in from the mouth, finally opened in preparation for their flight. “This is it,” he said excitedly. “I can hardly believe this. Can you believe this Shiro? I mean, of course, you can. You’ve definitely spent some time in space, but did you ever think you’d be test-flying an alien spacecraft?”

_I escaped in an alien spacecraft._

He couldn’t quite recall how though and considered his response. “Actually, that was my first thought when I found out I was being stationed at Groom Lake, I mean, everyone’s heard of Area 51, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hunk waved his hand, still focused the craft. “Wait.” He turned smartly. “It was?”

Shiro nodded. “Mmmhmm, and when the letter arrived, _someone_ ,” he glanced over at his mother, sitting silently beside him, hands clasped in her lap, “had already opened it for me.”

“Did I?” she mused, absently reaching for Keith’s book.

“Yes! Opening someone else’s mail is a federal offense! Have you not heard of this little thing called privacy?” He folded his arms across his chest in mock annoyance.

Mariko Shirogane pursed her lips and sniffed. She opened the cover, rifled the pages, and skimmed the table of contents before flipping to a section. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What else?” Hunk asked quietly.

“I-“ Shiro tried to recall the place, the time of day, anything else, but all he could see was his mother standing in the middle of the kitchen, letter in hand, reading it aloud. The memory faded back to a small node, compact like a white dwarf, sudden and without warning, as casually as it had come. He shook his head.

It was something.

His mother set the book aside and squeezed his hand.

Hunk turned back to his notes. “Keith!” he yelled, “You still alive in there?”

_Alive._

The beacons suddenly flashed red, bathing them in its bloodshed glow as it rotated like the strobing flash of a siren light again and again and again.

Keith had been withdrawn since they’d picked him up that morning, but it had progressively worsened since returning from whatever Montgomery had dragged him off to do, along with Kogane senior and Kaasan.

She still hadn’t told him why she was here.

Mariko released her hold and patted his arm, her voice quiet and low. “He needs you, you know.”

_He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need anyone, really._

Instead of having the conversation, Shiro decided to change the topic. “Where’s Mom?”

“Oh, she’s at home, holding down the fort.” Mariko laughed then added as if knowing she needed to offer something, “Montgomery asked me to come. General Montgomery, I mean. I’m still not used to _that_.”

_Why?_ He knew very little about the General, all things considered. She oversaw aspects of projects he had never been involved with, but he’d seen her around, watching, and could recognize her on sight. That was before he had _returned_. His mind had recovered bits and pieces of the experience. Bright white lights, dragging himself out of the wreckage of a Galra fighter, feeling the sting of the sun on his skin and the heavy load of gravity in his chest, ready to explode. General Montgomery had been the first person to formally interrogate him. She had also been the one to call his parents.

Mariko went on, unperturbed, filling Shiro’s silence. “Oh! You probably haven’t heard the news yet. Romelle and your brother are expecting. Isn’t that nice? It means you’re off the hook.” She glanced at him, then amended, “for now.”

Idle chat. What was it with parents and babies, anyway? “I’d make a terrible father.”

“Wrong. You have the gentlest soul and the biggest heart. You’re my sensitive boy.”

_“Sensitive.”_

Shiro cringed.

“Your brother’s just like your father; a regular piece of work. You can tell him I said that.” She winked. “You’re different. It’s a good thing.” She sighed and slid off the crate, landing lightly on her feet, looking him over. He let her fuss over him, brushing the dust off his collar and straightening the shoulders. She started rolling up his right sleeve, but a sudden, cramping pain coursed through the limb and he pulled away.

“You okay?” she asked concern in her tone, watching his face with her lips dawn together in a tight line.

He rubbed it with his palm. “Yeah, I’m sorry. Not sure what that was.”

_Don’t make like you don’t know your own withdrawal symptoms._

“Probably stress.” She played to his fraudulent ignorance, patting his back before hoisting herself back up beside him.

“Weapons systems,” Hunk boomed.

Panels separated, and turrets rose from the hull, shrouded in a puff of mist from the condensing air.

“Keith!” he called again, but this time in strained surprise.

“What?” Keith whined in annoyance as the guns returned below the skin of the craft and the emergency beacons blinked out, leaving them in the cutting noir of the safety lights spaced throughout the hangar. He finally emerged, flushed and damp with frizzy tendrils of hair escaping his messy, lopsided ponytail.

Shiro pretended he wasn’t paying attention, but he couldn’t help himself. Even like this, especially like this, Keith made him smile. He needed to find a moment where they could sit aside and talk, though he found himself hesitant at every small opening. What made it so hard to talk about? Was it embarrassment, or the implicit self-loathing that came with the realization that he’d reacted with the intent to harm?

And what if he had done it? Like wielding a power of the gods, he could have carved through the person he claimed to love with the same hand, in the same deft and absent sureness he used to slice meat.

Thankfully he’d left that hand at home.

Funny, Keith was the one with the knife.

Shiro watched him descend the rolling staircase, but Hunk blocked him at the floor hands gripped tightly around the railing.

“This-this is the ship that blew me up!” He stabbed the eraser end of his pencil toward it.

“Not possible.”

“It might not be exactly the same.” Hunk rifled through his notes. “But, it’s similar. Very similar.”

Keith stared at him thoughtfully but unquestioning, chewing at the corner of his lip with one sharp canine.

Shiro wished he wouldn’t do that. Especially after last night. If Allura had noted the provocation, she hadn’t said so. If she’d realized the implication, she didn’t seem to care. She had not batted an eye when Keith had walked out the door of the diner, and when Lotor had moved to go after him, she’d merely reiterated her warning.

Shiro should have listened.

“I guess I just didn’t realize it until I saw the canons,” Hunk said.

“There’s at least one other ship like this I’m aware of. I picked it up on the radar when I took her out.” Keith kept his eyes on the ship. “It’s Sendak’s.”

“No,” Shiro interrupted, looking at Keith. “Sendak’s is dead in the water, or more precisely, a barn.”

With measured slowness, Keith met his eyes, challenging. “Sendak showed me his face. He piloted it.”

It came out just like that, matter of fact, followed by an awkward lull.

“Why didn’t you say something yesterday?” It was the first thought that had come to mind, and he just let it out. He might as well have been three sheets to the wind or all sheets at the rate he was going.

Next, he might start hearing the Lions again.

_I need to hear the lions again._

“Classified,” came Keith’s curt response with a cutting glare as he turned to walk stiffly back up the staircase. “Come on, Hunk. We need to figure out how we’re all going to fit in the cockpit.”

They froze at the crash of a door slamming shut and equipment toppling from the shelves in front of Lance as Pidge pulled him to his feet. He rubbed at his eyes trying to smother a yawn in his shoulder as she dragged him toward the group.

“Sorry it took me so long.” Pidge uncurled her fingers and passed out what looked like small clip-on badges.

Shiro stared at his. Sitting flat on his palm where she’d dropped it was a radiation dosimeter.

Keith pinched the badge between his thumb and forefinger, raising a brow in questioning dismissal. “What do we need these for?”

“Uh, we’re going into _space_!” Pidge countered. “Do you know how much radiation is collected in the Van Allen Belts? In space? In general?”

“Yes,” Keith drawled, dark eyes bearing her down, waiting for the next ludicrous rebuttal as he cocked a hip and folded his arms, nesting the badge tightly in his palm. “The Van Allen Belts actually _protect_ Earth from excessive radiation.”

Pidge opened her mouth, butHunk spoke up before she could reply. “Look, we’ve sent people into space. The bombardment-”

Raising his voice over Hunk’s, Keith continued, “You pass through at night and a calculated angle to minimize exposure, It’s-” Suddenly realizing what he’d done, all eyes on him, he snapped his mouth shut.

Hunk stuffed his hands into his pockets, irritated. “I have nothing more to add.”

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“There are a lot of things you shouldn’t do, but you do them anyway.” Hunk stated.

Lance shifted.

Discomfiture resonated through the makeshift hangar.

While an apology might have been appropriate, Keith had missed a few lessons in etiquette and continued when no one else did. “The point is our scientists were able to calculate a trajectory to get astronauts safely away from Earth and the dangerous radiation.”

“And you’ll be able to do that too?” Pidge’s eyes widened dubiously.

Climbing off the staircase instead of asking Hunk to move, Keith went over to a pile of equipment by the crate where Shiro’s mother still watched them, quietly observing from behind the spread covers of Keith’s first book. Grabbing a hardbound tome, he tossed it to Pidge like it was nothing. He jerked his head back, fighting the hair in his eyes.

Pidge fumbled but caught it.

“That is the flight manual. Page seventy-three. Program sequence for launch.”

Reading the title page, licked her thumb, then paged through the leaves. “You wrote this.”

“Yes.” Keith coughed and cleared his throat. “What do you think I spent the past nineteen days here doing?”

Shiro found his response unnecessary, but effective. He’d just confirmed where he’d been and for how long.

“Look,” Lance said, snatching the manual from Pidge, immediately turning to the index and scanning the list and flipping to a page. “Let’s go to bed. Okay? We’ve been in a van all day, we’re argumentative, irritated,” he broke his concentration to glance up at Shiro, “hurt, and tired. Is this speed right?” He tapped at a chart on the page.

Keith bent over to see what Lance pointed to, eyes rapidly following the numbers down the page. “Theoretically. It hasn’t been tested.”

Lance released his breath with a deep rattle. “Okay, assuming it is, because that’s all we can do, sunrise is around 0720, so we sleep and come back down here at, say, 0600?”

“0630. I have the sequence memorized,” Keith replied, reluctantly pinning the badge to the front of his flight suit, just below his name and the red chevron Allura had stitched beside it.

_Voltron._

Picking up his helmet and slinging the strap of his oxygen tank over his shoulder, Shiro gestured for the sleepy officer guarding them.

“Where can we get some shuteye around here?”

 

+++

 

Keith made for the only single cot in the barrack, dropping his gear on the floor as he collided with the mattress, melding into it and nearly disappearing into the cavity of its sunken center. He felt like the collapsing heart of a dying star ready to burst. Or fizzle out to nothing.

Eventually, he’d have to tell them.

_Starman._

What was Lotor playing at, why was he so interested in the Paladins, and why hadn’t Allura mentioned him before? In truth, she owed nothing to anyone, and he was unimportant to her narrative. Keith’s “mother” had come to Earth with the Galra insurgents while Mariko Shirogane still worked at Los Alamos, but he somehow doubted Lotor and Sendak were associated with that group.

Lotor, the exiled son of the emperor. Did that make him a prince? And what did they look like when they weren’t pretending to be human? Keith remembered Shiro saying something about that. He hadn’t been able to see Sendak well over the comms unit in the spacecraft, but he’d recognized his voice and his sharp eyes. Galra were probably like the picture of Krolia, larger than Shiro, purple, and humanoid.

Keith felt certain he had seen Lotor before, months ago now, when he’d tried to take Shiro on a date. Lotor was Sendak’s dinner partner, the one who slipped away after that strange confrontation. How long had the man been present and for what cause? Was it true that he was also the product of multiple species?If so, what were they? Keith assumed he could regenerate; he had expressed no concern over that finger. Was regeneration a Galra thing or did that come from somewhere else?

There were so many options.

He had scrawled his own pedigree with a permanent marker on his arm. He’d probably sweat it off, but the act of writing it down branded it in his memory.

_2.8% Altean_

The notes in the file indicated that had come from Krolia as well, tested against samples from both Allura and Coran.

_Specimen X9Y-005_ .

Thinking about it now, he realized how utterly ridiculous Shiro’s mom had sounded. Tangible empathy? Maybe she believed it, but he certainly did not.

Ultimately, he decided it didn’t mean anything. He certainly didn’t feel any different. Keith wondered if he was sterile, or if he could conceivably produce viable offspring. The idea of sexual accountability made him smile. Unless something changed in the unforeseeable future, he was not going to be producing biological children anyway. The pictures of the Galra warrior Krolia were faded and yellow, but a down of lavender fur covered her body, and a perfectly symmetrical stripe pattern spread from her back around to her cheeks, chest, over her hips, and the curve of her thighs. She stood against a wall with measurements marked for height and width nearly as broad and taller than Shiro.

He hadn’t entirely been able to make out what was going on with her reproductive organs. Someone had handled those pictures far too much for their own good. He figured she was female because the people who had known her used female pronouns to describe her, but there was definitely a shadow that looked less like nothing and more like something dangling between her legs.

Maybe Galra were like those insects where the female penetrates the male with her spiny penis to take his sperm and impregnate herself?

_Wild._

If he did have children, what would they look like?

_Mostly human, probably._

What was his lifespan?

_Who knows?_

Would he go through puberty again, or had Mad Doctor Shirogane succeeded in regards to appearance?

_Let’s hope._

Keith counted airholes in the paint heavily coating the cinder block wall. He tried not to overthink how little he suddenly understood about himself, things that he’d always assumed or taken for granted.

Mariko had made him. She took credit for it, but he hadn’t been born for another six years. Had they just kept him on ice? Why? And why did his father take him shortly after he was born? How had he ended up in California? Transfer to Edwards was a tidy tale but fabricated nonetheless.

Because someone wasn’t telling the truth.

He liked conspiracy theories, they were fun to talk about, consider, even attempt to decipher, but he had never thought he’d end up being one. Yet here he was at the center of some half-baked cover-up, and he had the distinct feeling he wouldn’t find anything more in Montgomery’s files.

At least they told him. It was the most ludicrous take they wouldn’t be able to make it up if they tried.

_“Keith?”_

The voice interrupted his train of thought. The Red Lion’s voice carried as little more than a whisper on the edge of exhaustion. Pidge and Lance clamored to the top bunks, the bed frames squealing and creaking like the chatter of nightbirds.

“Are you going to take your boots off?” Shiro asked.

He turned to face the wall and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying not to listen.

“Keith?”

_“Keith?”_

There she was again, and he no longer knew who echoed whom.

_Where are you, Red?_

“Shiro,” Lance mumbled from beneath a nest of blankets. “Let him be.”

_Thank you, Lance._

He listened to their banter only half attentively, interrupted again.

_“I’m here. With you.”_

The Red Lion pushed her way inside the fortress, lightly padding through the labyrinthine walls, but they weren’t his walls. Cold metal soared to the high ceilings, disappearing in a violet haze. An icon that reminded him of the sigil on his dagger but undefined, split, and splayed flat like a Rorschach inkblot hung suspended above her when she appeared. Shrinking her massive form, she urged him to his feet and strode beside him. Her tail lashed back and forth, smacking his ankles every time she edged ahead. Nuzzling his hand, she nimbly turned a circle around him, his fingertips dragging along the streamlined form of her warm armored hull. Urging him forward, she butted her head against the small of his back, leading him through corridors and narrow alleys, places not intended for passage. Finally, she stopped, shoulders tense as she nosed her way into a large room, a hangar or docking bay, perhaps, but empty. Satisfied that he’d seen, she sat on her haunches and put her head down, the light dimming from her great golden eyes.

 

+++

 

Shiro leaned into the turn, taking it on axial rotation. Whatever forces kept him levitating upright made for a smooth ride. The engine purred between his loins. He looked down.

_So much for the hoverbike fantasy._

The captain’s seat welcomed him into its embrace, and with his feet planted firmly on the floor, he gripped the steering in his hands. _Both_ hands. The white pearl shell of the armor encasing his massive thighs vibrated together as another jarring blow crashed against his ship from behind. Clouds of smoke mushroomed outside his cockpit, and as it cleared, a winged being of herculean proportion materialized from the dusty cosmos.

Sound. Gasping, grunting, heavy, labored breathing passed through his helmet.

“Shiro!”

Keith? He opened his mouth to speak but fell mute as if his vocal cords had been ripped from his throat leaving him strangely disconnected. He blinked. Like an angel, it spread its wings, glittering metal in the beams of light streaming off the dreadnought behind it.

“Shiro?” Keith tried again over the crackling radio. “Something’s wrong with Shiro!”

Another shockwave reverberated through his craft, but he couldn’t tell from where. The emergency lights flashed red, dousing him in its baptismal strobe. He had to do something, but what? The console seemed familiar, yet he felt confident he hadn’t been there before. He glanced down at his hands again, the accents on his armor, the symbol emblazoned on his chest, gleaming like polished obsidian.

If he stared hard enough, perhaps he’d be able to scry this reality.

“-away from the Black Lion!” Pidge begged though he could barely hear her.

Black Lion. He was inside the Black Lion.

He tried again to speak. Nothing.

Keith yelled, “Don’t give up!”

“I don’t know, man. I’m running out of strength,” Hunk panted.

“Holy crow, look out!” Lance shrieked.

Where were they? Radar, he had to check the radar, but he could not avert his eyes. He tried to move his hands from the sticks, but like his voice, they refused to budge. The winged being turned to face him. He’d seen that face before.

Shiro shot up in bed, scraping the top of his head against the rusted springs holding the mattress up above him.

He wiped the sweat and blood from his brow and lay back down, wondering why he always had to be the passenger.

 

+++

 

The small craft rattled and shook, plowing through the stratosphere. Keith checked the angle. Behind them, the sun crested over the edge of the Earth.

Shiro’s shuddering breath echoed through his microphone.

_You didn’t have to come._

Configuring the seating for more than five proved impossible. Keith had helped Hunk weld the additional chairs around the legs of the pilot’s seat. They’d been unable to drill into the deck, and after destroying several diamond bits, they’d given in to resourceful creativity, using the single chair as an anchor for the rest, cobbling seating together from what they could scavenge from passed tests and abandoned aircraft.

No one Paladin could be left behind. It was all or nothing. Allura dubbed it, “team building.”

The craft still refused to give up her secrets, and all attempts to fix familiar navigation equipment in place turned out to be nearly as difficult as adding more seats. In the end, Pidge had produced a roll of industrial duct tape and used it to hold meters and gauges hostage against the dash.

Keith had spent several long days wondering if the ship had sentience like the Lions, but if it did, it revealed no secrets to him. Its creator had forged it from a different magic. Montgomery had sent him the most recent report, indicating that most of the saucer appeared to be composed of super heavy metals. The generated XRF spectrum matched no known elements, yet the materials did not yield to rapid decay. The best guess was that it was within the theoretical island of stability, and regardless of anything else, it was like nothing found on Earth.

Keith patted the edge of the console.

_Me too, friend._

The burn slowed, and a new set of propulsion mechanics kicked in, the small craft blundering side to side with sickening yaw. Indicators flashed, and Keith timed the count before reaching up to toggle each one. The spaceship leveled, and the lights blinked out leaving the dim glow of the panels to illuminate the cockpit.

“Oh thank God,” Hunk whispered, words crackling through static. He gulped.

“If you can fly her better, be my guest,” Keith said. “Pidge, we’re still in gravitational range, but outside Earth’s atmosphere. Engine power audibly changed, prompted the pilot to switch 1,5,7,2, and 9. In that order.”

She repeated the numbers to herself, reaching into the pocket velcroed to her seat for a pad and pencil. “Got it,” she said, scribbling down the notes.

“Thanks.” They had been instructed to update the manual when they returned. Communication with the base was cut off completely, and nothing was being recorded.

Transfixed, Lance stared out the windshield. “Hey, guys, look.”

The pendant moon glistered, a beacon of luminous white gold.

_It’s so quiet._

Humankind first set foot in space nearly fifty-five years ago, yet it felt now like they were still among Earth’s first explorers of this new vast realm. Pathetic, really. They’d made it so far, yet human space travel was still like going no further than one’s own backyard and finding some nifty rocks.

The only sound was the regular slush of blood between his ears and the silty respiration of his comrades ghosting through his headset.

Three dots blinked instantaneously onto his radar, different symbols denoting each one. Keith recognized the first, but the other two were new.

“Shit. I should have known better.”

“What?” Hunk craned his head over Keith’s shoulder for a better look.

“Remember what Montgomery said? Two battleships on the other side of the moon. One smaller craft closing in. There’s no way they don’t know we’re here, but I can’t tell how far out they are.”

“What do you mean?” Lance groused. “It’s on the radar. I can see it.” He stabbed a finger at the screen.

“Do you see distance anywhere?” Keith shot back. “I can’t read fucking Galra. We have to get out of here.”

“Right,” Hunk clipped. “So get us out of here!”

Shiro’s breaths came quicker and louder.

“Shiro?” Keith asked.

“I-I’m fine,” he stammered.

Keith had no time to argue. The smallest dot came closing in. He had to navigate them out of this mess before it escalated.

“How far away is the moon?” Pidge scribbled a diagram on the pad. “Come on! Anyone?”

Keith watched the numbers rise on the digital odometer, checking the other instruments duct taped to the dash. “Uh, closest perigee was last month, so, three hundred fifty-seven, maybe eight, thousand kilometers from the ground?”

“How do you remember this stuff?” she asked.

“I got it wrong on a pop quiz. In college.”

Hunk clenched his teeth and whimpered. “We’re not on the ground.”

Keith heard something behind him and raised himself up to see Shiro’s reflection in the polished metal above the windshield, fumbling with the latch on his helmet.

“Don’t you dare take that off!” he barked. “Hunk, there’s no gravity. You’re fine.”

“We’re not fine.” Lance leaned forward, pressing his visor up against the window, their one barrier against the dark starscape outside.

“How far away from Earth are we?” Pidge raised her voice, ignoring Lance and Hunk, craning to look at the instruments lined up along the inside of the windshield. “Can’t see!”

“Thirty-five thousand kilometers and climbing.” Keith watched the numbers tick up on the odometer and the red dot edge closer.

Pidge counted something on her fingers, then gave up. “Good luck pilot. That little ship is going to be here right about-”

Keith pulled the steering hard to the right, and the small craft spun upward on its edge and around to face the visitor. The communications screen hissed and sparked alive to a fizzling gray. He still did not know how to turn it off. “Cover that!”

Pidge popped her harness and braced herself in the seat of her chair to smash her notepad over the center of the screen, holding it up with a foot as she attempted to buckle herself back in.

“Somebody doesn’t want to be seen.” Sendak’s voice boomed through the cockpit over the receiver, laughing.

Keith flipped a switch and tapped a sequence of buttons on the control panel, raising the guns from the hull.

Shiro reached around Pidge and hit a button beside the panel. Nothing happened. He tapped it several times, each time more desperate than the last. “This one!”

Keith smacked it with his palm, and Sendak was suddenly cut short as a different set of voices ripped through their cramped space. He assumed it was the Galran language, like the transmission from the moon it was so similar to the dialect the lions used when speaking amongst themselves, but without the luxury of a recording to repeat he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“That’s Lotor!” Pidge exclaimed, pointing at the panel where her boot still trapped the notepad.

“What?” Hunk leaned forward, fingers gripping the edge of his seat.

“It’s definitely him,” Shiro confirmed, then hesitated, “It sounds like they’re letting Sendak deal with us.”

“Good.” Keith raised the sighting target and fired.

Nothing.

“Uh...” Frantic, Keith looked around. There had to be an automated sequence, but he’d only managed to figure out how to release the triggering mechanism.

“Give me that!” Lance shrugged out of his harness and climbed into Keith’s lap. He gripped the fabric of Keith’s pant leg to keep from floating away.

“Get off of me!” Keith elbowed him, hard.

Lance whipped forward and back, slamming into Keith’s helmet. The impact cracked the outer visor, the fissure spreading immediately like frost through the gold-coated polycarbonate.

“Fuck! It’s not like I needed to see or anything.”

“Shut up. Geez. Just hold on a sec.” Lance pushed himself down, avoiding the kick aimed at his ass and wedging himself between Keith’s legs and the instrumentation.

“Get out!” Keith kneed his helmet.

“Lance! This is not the time-” Shiro warned, a hint of possessiveness in his tone.

Bursts of a warning shot reverberated through the ship.

“I felt that!” Hunk shrilled.

“He hit us!” Pidge screamed.

“I didn’t see it!” Keith growled.

“No shit.” Lance returned. “We’re in space. IF,” he stressed, “the weapons systems are all light particle based, you’re not going to be able to see them.” Lance grabbed the weapon control. “Just fly! I’ll figure this out. I’m the gunner.”

Keith pulled another hard turn flipping the craft and spinning it around. The sonic reverberation rattled their small ship. He glanced at the navigation pane. The last thing he wanted to do was lead Sendak to the Green Lion.

“I can’t get it to work.” Lance joggled the controls. “There’s no resistance.”

“Try harder!” Keith said, veering wide, unable to see where the fired shots would hit to dodge.

“I can’t!”

Keith searched the dash panel.

“That one!” Shiro grabbed the back of his chair and pointed to a series of blinking characters. “That releases the weapons lock. It disconnects the system from the pilot.”

_How do you know that?_

Keith jabbed at it with two fingers.

“Yes!” Lance edged the sight up to the window, aimed, and fired. A burst of orange struck the hull of the other craft as Keith switched to anterior thrust and punched the engine sending them into a backward spiral over Sendak and away from both Earth and the Green Lion.

With Lance keeping their tail at bay, it was easier to concentrate.

This was not the way Keith had envisioned his first trip to outer space. Yet still, the sheer vastness of the galactic expanse threatened to steal his breath away, and the red planet loomed ahead.

“It can take the good part of a year to get here with our current tech,” Pidge marveled.

_Yep._

They passed it, the asteroid belt on the approach, yet it was nothing like he’d imagined. Chunks of rock and debris drifted, suspended in the vacuous space. It had been there so long even seemingly denser areas still allowed a wide berth between stone and grit. Sendak, hot on their trail, had managed to keep pace.

Lance swiveled the turrets, his screen following around, and fired off the rear. “I’m hitting, but I’m not doing much damage.”

Return fire hit dead on from behind. Once, twice.

Lance grunted.

Keith ground his teeth, unable to ignore the hiccup in Hunk’s breath and Shiro’s muttering struggle to stave off panic.

“I’m going in, can you shoot at the rocks or something to block our tail?”

“I can try.” Lance fired off a few shots, grazing a mound of debris sending it lazily wheeling in place.

Laughter thundered over the intercom. “Still trying to figure out how your weapons work? I don’t know where you came from or why you can use our tech, but give it up.”

“Turn it off!” Shiro hissed, reaching up and pressing the button again, to no avail.

Keith tapped it once, and the screen went dark.

Pidge dropped her foot and rubbed her leg.

“He’s closing in! Keith?” Lance twisted around to face him.

Keith mashed the throttle down hard, squeezing out an extra bit of power. “I can see that on the radar. If anyone has a good idea, now’s the time to speak.”

No one said a word.

“Oh come on!” He pressed on, aiming for clusters of rock and boulders, then pulling away at the last moment in an attempt to buy some time.

Hunk snapped his harness and glided over to watch the back from the weapons panel. “He’s gaining on us!”

A loud crack hit them from above as Keith pulled up, skimming between two large asteroids. Hunk hit the roof back-first before the lack of gravity sent him rolling in midair. He reached for his seat to right himself. “That’s it.”

He might as well have said, “I’m done.”

Gripping the chair, Hunk’s hands shook, and a golden glimmer wafted from his fingertips through his flight gloves. Outside, the asteroids quaked, drawing together in the wake of their craft and carving out a clear path before them.

Keith accelerated, glancing up at the screens as a burst of fire exploded the first wall and a second assembled itself in its place.

Several of the rocks split apart, scattering a slurry behind them, glittering like shards of glass in the sun’s cold, penetrating light.

“Yes!” Lance pumped his fist and fired again.

Brilliant as the tail of a flame, radiance emanated from Hunk, filling the cramped cabin. All of him glowed as he worked his hands in the air, a master puppeteer moving each piece into place.

_Faster!_

Ahead, the path lay clear, save the gleaming point before them, floating like a cosmic egg amongst the pockmarked rubble.

The Yellow Lion unfurled herself, eyes bright and alive with the fury of a god. She arched forward, tail curving high over her back, claws extended, her prowess full of strength. Keith dropped, wrenching the ship around to her flank as she took the next sonic wave in their stead. She faced Sendak head on and roared. Energy surging from her being, rippling through space.

Transfixed, Hunk stared through the windshield, visor up and smiling, hot tears streaming from the corners of his eyes as he panted, trying to catch his breath before hurtling forward in a faint.

They fell to a standstill. Sendak would not fire on the lion, and yet Keith could already sense her energy waning.

The lion’s eyes dimmed, and she rolled over, lifeless.

Shiro wrapped his hand around Hunk’s wrist, but flinched and let go, steam evaporating off his hands. “His gloves are burned through!”

“Just buckle him in. He’s probably fine,” Keith directed, recalling his own brush with fire.

“Go, go, go!” Pidge screamed. “Get us out of here!”

“What about the Lion?” Lance asked.

“We leave her.” Hunk bonded, the commotion in Keith’s head told him that much at least.

“It doesn’t matter where we go, this ship has a homing signal!” Shiro said, the fringe of hysteria in his tone.

“I think I can fix that, just _go_!” Pidge frantically tapped Keith’s arm, insistent in her quiet plea.

“Well, you better figure it out asap.” Debris shattered above them, and Keith turned again, dropping through the plane of the belt and heading back toward the inner planets.

“Take me to Green.”

There had to be a better way to go about this. He stared at the console, eyes traveling from flickering light to flickering light. None of the symbols meant anything to him. He pulled up the navigation pane, zooming into the destination. The ship was fast, but not fast enough.

_Sendak’s just playing with us._

Dread settled in, curdling his stomach. He had to do _something_.

Shiro pushed himself over onto Lance’s seat, careful to avoid physical contact. He reached across the dash and pressed two blinking squares. “This one, then this one.” Hurriedly, he struggled to snap Lance’s harness over himself.

“How…” Keith followed his instructions, the engines thundering to life. The destination flickered on navigation, and without warning, the space in front of them suddenly bent inward, sucking them in as they winked out of existence.

With a blinding flash of white, they returned, floating in orbit around what looked like a picture-perfect NASA image of Venus. The map agreed.

Keith could hear Shiro’s labored breathing as he sighed relief.

“Whoa-ooooow!” Pidge exclaimed. “That was like- Did we just travel through a black hole?”

“Gravitational wave propulsion,” Keith muttered.

He glanced over at Shiro, the sun shield on his visor obscuring his face. Either he could read Galra, or he knew exactly how the ship operated, or...

_Both._

_The man, identified as Colonel Takashi Shirogane, reported missing since…… appears to have been the only passenger inside the aircraft…… Representatives from the base were not available for comment…… The landing site is temporarily closed until further investigation……_

Keith had read about it in the local paper. Somewhere at home he probably still had the article clipped out and stashed away.

Shiro had flown himself back to Earth, and it was definitely his prosthetic arm, his _Galra_ arm, that had enabled him to do that. But why keep that a secret? Or was he remembering it now?

The spacecraft surged with the periodic pitch of a sine wave as the second ship blinked in behind them.

Keith took off around the planet.

“She’s up ahead!” Pidge yelled.

“Yeah, but he’ll find her! He’s already seen Yellow!”

“No, he won’t. Can you get us closer in?”

Running on the sputtering fumes of instinct and trust, Keith did as she asked.

“STOP!” Pidge commanded.

As soon as the word had left her mouth, a presence descended over the ship, shrouding them in its guise. Keith pushed forward on the steering, decking Lance’s shoulder as he braked against their momentum, fighting for control. Everything liquified and shifted around them, spreading like a slick of oil over the surfaces of the craft before it shuddered and disappeared.

This close to the Green Lion, her conduit trembled, gripping tightly to the seat, muscles tensed. Each breath sucked in between Pidge’s teeth pulled the magic around her. Sprouts of new growth, earth-like vegetation rose up from the armrest between her gloved fingers, leaves budding and unfurling as Keith watched in awe.

The greening aura flooded the cabin, warm and moist. Even through his gloves, the surfaces felt spongy, and the musty scent of peat filled his air mask.

Pidge rolled her head toward him, still struggling to hold on. “Don’t. Move,” she tongued into her mic.

Keith thumbed toward Hunk. _What about him?_

She raised a finger for silence.

They watched the screens, the little ship that had so diligently followed them zipped around in aggravation.

“Come out, come out!” The voice came through clearly, but the screen panel remained dark. “There is no place to hide!”

“Sendak,” Another voice suddenly rang out over the taunt. “We don’t have the time to deal with this right now. My father has instructed the battleship to prepare the Komar for pending deployment.”

“But-”

“Either the Lions show or they don’t.” Lotor ended the transmission.

“The Yellow-”

“Lion is not going anywhere. I need you back here now.”

After long moments of hesitation, Sendak’s craft flew off and disappeared from the radar.

“What was that?” Lance asked, head tilted back toward Keith.

“I’m not sure,” Shiro began, “but he wanted us to hear that.”

_Yes. So, why?_

 

+++

 

“Komar.” Allura looked at Coran.

He shrugged, tugging out the wrinkles from his satin jacket, smoothing back his brassy hair, and slouching in the chair.

Keith leaned over the table, chin in one hand propped on an elbow, and packed a box of cigarettes firmly against the resin-coated laminate. He avoided Shiro’s eyes and the accusatory stare. If he couldn’t have a smoke, the next best thing would be a nap. He hadn’t slept more than six hours in the last fifty- he’d lost count. The debrief alone had lasted over four hours, and they’d only let him off after he’d described travel via wormhole as rubberband space bending.

Traveling to space had been his childhood dream, yet this experience had sucked all the wonder dry. He’d taken them out and brought them back safely, nerves completely fried, and once landed, he’d lain on his back outside the spaceship until General Montgomery had kicked him in the ribs so hard he’d had to get up off the cold cement.

“I’ve heard it before,” Shiro said, carefully phrasing his thought. “I didn’t remember anything about it until I heard Lotor call it by name, but I believe it has to do with quintessence extraction.”

“Do you believe or do you know?” Keith focused intently on the Surgeon General’s warning and picked at the cellophane wrapper. He still couldn’t tell if it was the situation sparking the memories or if Shiro had been intentionally holding out.

The way he’d deliberately left that prosthetic arm at home.

Shiro took a deep breath. “I know.”

Eyes narrowed, Keith glanced over at him. “Like you knew how to fly that ship?”

He swallowed, audibly flustered. “It’s not that simple. When we were out there and Sendak appeared, it was just like… like when I escaped.”

Keith blinked slowly, hoping this was just a sleep deprived hallucination with the burning gazes from six sets of curious eyes boring through him.

Shiro went on. “I can’t fly that ship. I couldn’t even turn off the comms screen.”

Keith could sense the unspoken accusation, lingering in the dense air.

_“If no one else can do it, how can you?”_

_Don’t turn this on me!_

“I bet you could have if you’d brought that arm of yours,” Keith grumbled. He abandoned the thought right there, scratched his neck, and reached into his boot for the dagger.

“How did you get that past security?” Hunk asked.

Keith opened his mouth to reply, but he didn’t have an answer. He’d thought he’d left it at home, but as soon as they’d gone through security, it had been there. With a shrug, Keith carefully sliced through the wrapped end of the plastic with the tip of the blade.

Allura cleared her throat. “Back to the problem at hand. I’ve been trying to confirm the existence of the Komar device for some time. If it’s truly there and ready to be used, we have to get the Lions, form Voltron, and destroy it before it obliterates this planet.”

“And how are we supposed to do that. Lions are dead in the water.” Lance stretched his arms high above his head, yawning.

“Actually,” Hunk corrected, “my Lion is dead in the asteroid belt.”

Head down between her folded arms, Pidge blew an exasperated raspberry.

“Well, first,” Allura went on, “the Red Paladin needs to connect with his Lion.”

Keith smoothed out the rectangle of plastic with its precisely folded ends and began carving off small slivers, cutting into the tabletop.

“Keith?” she prompted, waiting for a reply.

“Sure,” he looked up, rubbing his nose, “but I’m going alone.”

“No, you’re not,” Allura countered. “That Lion is being held on what is most likely an alpha-class destroyer. That ship will have the supplies and materials I need to repair mine.”

 

+++

 

Shiro entered the small break room, trying to decide what to do. Allura and Coran were gone, likely negotiating preparations with Montgomery and her staff. Officers and officials had begun to arrive. He’d glimpsed them at the intersections of the corridors and passed them through the halls of the warren. Several times, he’d been stopped on his way back.

_Attention! Salute!_

He’d stand up straight, stiff-backed and dignified.

_Oh, wait, that soldier’s missing a hand._

He sighed. Lance had fallen asleep at the table, feet tucked under his chair and face buried in the folds of his flight suit, the lacing let out and trailing on the floor. Hunk squeezed his shoulder and went back to his tablet.In the opposite corner of the room, Pidge had somehow managed to acquire several bulky computer towers and unidentifiable devices, set up in an expanding, metropolis around her chair, intently typing and only stopping to adjust a knob or a cable.

He had a feeling she wouldn’t find what she was looking for in the internal database, but she needed to figure that out on her own.

Keith slouched on the sofa, his eyes half closed with a crust of dried blood still caked around the edge of his nostrils and a small wastebasket between his feet, filled with bloody tissues. That hadn’t stopped for more than a few hours since they’d been back. Boots and gloves sat in a pile beside the coffee table, the front of his flight suit parted over his chest, unzipped just past his waist, and the outline of his tags proud beneath an olive drab undershirt. In one hand, his fingers curled loosely around the handle of his knife.

Shiro fussed with the lacing at his back, pulling out the tie and loosening the fit of his suit before sitting down.

“Look, Keith, what is going on?” He tried not to cringe at the desperation in his voice. This was not where he wanted to start, he needed a rewind button on the dictation machine spooning him the modus operandi of his life. What had become apparent was that Keith’s fear was not only directed toward emotional commitment, there was something else wound up in that, too. It had not occurred to Shiro that Keith might also be afraid of himself. At least not until now.

He’d been so upset, so pumped through the coal dust adrenaline of the moment that he’d only been able to see it from one side. His hand at Keith’s throat, the radiant violet glow pulsating with his heart, the voice inside his head growing louder, calling his name.

_“Shiro!”_

_Champion._

He didn’t know if the Black Lion had called him back to reality or if he’d done it on his own. Whatever it was had stopped him from something he felt sure he’d never be able to forgive. If he had hurt Keith…

_You didn’t do it. You’re still in control._

Keith stared at him. Brows knit and eyes narrowed with a slight twist of his head to meet Shiro’s questioning gaze. “I’m fine,” he answered after a very long pause.

He didn’t answer the question.

“No, you’re not.”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Keith, my own mother won’t tell me why she’s here, and I have a solid hunch the reason has something to do with you.”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Shiro reached out to brush the hair from Keith’s face, but he pulled away.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Please!” Shiro didn’t think he could deal with much more of this.

_I don’t want to lose you._

_Push it down. Push it down._

“What?” he snapped. “Are you going to make me repeat myself a third time?” the reflection of the fluorescent lighting burned like white-hot rods in his dark eyes.

A tensely palpable animosity surrounded him. He flipped the blade over in his hands, then immediately tossed it over to his shoes.

“Keith, I-”

“Will you just stop? I don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stood up, cracking his joints and turning his back to Shiro as he headed toward the sink.

“I’m worried about you! You can’t keep running away from your problems.”

Keith whipped around. “Right. Okay.” He walked back, with the measured, feral grace that always made Shiro stop to watch. “Are you sure you want to go there? I’m not the one melting my brain on opioid addiction. I’m not the one too scared to face whatever it is they did to you for that one year. Hide behind your PTSD diagnosis. I know you don’t see your therapist as often as you say you do. I’m not as stupid as you take me for.”

Throwing his head back and closing his eyes, he took a deep, shuddering breath.

Shiro pressed his hands to his sinuses. “Keith-”

“Don’t even start. You don’t understand a single thing about me!” he yelled. The ugly vehemence in his voice lashed out from some dark place. He spat.

Lance shot up, eyeing Keith with his sleep-glazed eyes and impressions of his wrinkled sleeves down his cheek. Hunk peeked around him, and Pidge raised her glasses as she stared across the room.

Shiro wished he’d composed his speech. Words refused to come. Hopeless. Miserable and hopeless and he didn’t know what to do.

Keith pushed his breath out through his nose, a bubble of bloody snot popping over his lips, and bent over to tug on his boots, not bothering to tie the laces. He stuffed his gloves into a pocket then rucked up his pant leg and shoved the dagger into a sheath strapped around his calf.

“Nobody does,” he whispered, smoothing the fabric down again, “not even me.”He looked away and dashed to the door as Allura pushed it inward, Coran on her heels.

“Keith!” she said, nearly colliding as he shouldered past.

“Tell them,” Shiro heard him say. “Just tell them what that scanner in your cellar told you about me.”

Her eyes widened. “But where are you going?”

“Outside,” his voice flatlined. “I haven’t had my existential crisis yet.”

“They won’t let you,” Coran replied, tossing up what Shiro thought looked like several red packs of gum. “Here. I bought these at the commissary.”

_What commissary?_

Keith plucked them from the air before turning and walking away down the passage.

Shiro let his head fell to his hands and tried to find the strength to quell the tempest inside.

 

+++

 

Keith sat behind the dumpster on the loading dock, one of the few blind spots in the security feed. He puffed on a cigarette and absently turned the packs of gum over and over again in his hand.

Big Red. It should have made him smile.

What would they think when Allura told them? She had to; he’d made sure he’d spoken loudly enough. Lance would certainly never let him hear the end of it. Hunk and Pidge? It would probably be confirmation of something they had long suspected. Pidge had most likely stirred up at least some of the dirt on him. Most people, when they got to know him, were afraid of him, and with good enough reason.

He’d had his juvenile record expunged when he turned 18. The Air Force knew what it contained, and they’d taken him anyway. He’d been so deliberately careful, yet there’d been that one time.

When he thought about it now, he couldn’t recall the exact words the commander had spoken, ugly words about class and race, but he remembered how they’d made him feel and the intent behind them.

Without a second thought, he’d punched Commander Iverson square in the eye, crushing the oculus, severing the optic nerve. Thus he marked the beginning of the end of his career as an almost officer. He would have accepted the commission. He’d wanted to.

_“Someday you’re going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”_

Allura’s more recent observation hit the same sore notes. As far as he knew, the chair was still stuck in the wall at her restaurant, that in and of itself, said everything.

Shiro had only tried to make sure he was going to be okay.

He hadn’t been able to see past that, or even realize it was Shiro who had followed him out. He’d just turned on all his impulse, his anger and frustration and let it loose.

Shameful. That’s what it was.

_Yeah, well, you should damned well be ashamed of yourself._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for bearing with me. I know it's been a while... 
> 
> <3


	12. Coronal Mass Ejection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galra warships, Red Lion retrieval, and what is going on with that Black Paladin?

_Try shooting at the moon._

 

+++

 

The open-cage freight elevator descended through the mountain’s core, seemingly endless as it crawled along. With each floor they passed, the air grew denser, a palpable weight that stank of sulfur and a stale, permeating dampness.

Keith lazily traced the sigil in the crossguard of his knife, ignoring Mariko's curious glances and his father's occasional snoring. General Montgomery had brought them along to bear witness. She had stuffed all of the files explicitly pertaining to human and Galra hybrid experimentation into three over-full banker's boxes now secured by bungee to the dolly parked at the center of the car.

_“I canceled the project a long time ago, and now that you’ve seen the files, we’re going to put them away.”_  

This exercise was for his own benefit, Keith reminded himself, so that he could see where the boxes went. It remained up to him to determine whether or not he could trust Montgomery. Although often cagey, she had never, at least as far as he knew, lied to him. The cover story was that the project had failed. Even should someone invoke the Freedom of Information Act, nothing would turn up. None of the files had been digitized. Mariko had abandoned all her research when she left the project. One or two figures in the upper echelons might know of its existence, but the last four people directly involved were right here. Keith included himself for the obvious reason; he was the end result.

"That looks like the blade Krolia carried," Montgomery said, side-eyeing Keith’s dagger with interest.

He quickly sheathed it.

“He wouldn’t know,” Kogane senior grumbled, sucking the corner of his mouth between his teeth and wrapping his hands in the thread-worn edge of his blanket.

The general raised a brow and turned away.

Nothing particularly cruel or vulgar had escaped his father's lips during the time they had spent together on base. Keith was beginning to think the old man might be faking his condition or at least some part of it. Although uncharacteristically docile, he still drooled, forgot what he was doing, and couldn't use the toilet unassisted. _That_ Keith had discovered by accident and when it had turned into a yelling match, he had left his father in the stall for somebody else to find and clean up.

He needed to learn patience, real patience that didn’t flip a switch when the circuits overloaded or exhaustion set in.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, he heard Pidge telling him to breathe on a four-count over the phone, in and out until the seething red cleared from his vision. In the background, Shiro added some clichéd anecdote.

Next time.

Eventually, Montgomery pulled a lever, and at the following platform, they jolted to a halt. Stepping out to a pair of double doors, she stopped before a keypad and input her code. A panel popped up, and she submitted to a retinal scan. With a soft click and a loud hiss, the lock disengaged, and the doors slid apart. "Come," she beckoned.

Keith pushed his father's wheelchair after her, deeper into the complex. Mariko huffed along beside him, pushing the dolly along and trying to stifle her ragged breaths.

“What was the real purpose?” he asked. “I mean, quintessence can’t be the only reason you decided to create me-”

“Can’t a couple just want a kid?” the old man grumbled.

Keith wanted to believe it was as his father suggested, imagining a point in some alternate reality where his father had taken him aside with a pat on his shoulder to begin the age-old talk, _“Son, when a man and a cryptid love each other very much…”_ People either wanted to make a child and did or didn't and oops, all of a sudden it was there. He evidently belonged to the former group, but he had a hard time believing the excuses he'd been given. Especially since he'd arrived with four other people who could also, to some degree, harness quintessence.

"What about Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and," he hadn't wanted to go there, but here he was, "Shiro."

“We didn’t know it could be acquired. Allura had found no one capable of piloting her Lions. So we tried to engineer it. Leave it to people to force a revolution. You became part of a long-term goal,” Mariko answered. “Keep in mind, you were born years after I left. We are operating on a time scale greater than ourselves-”

“Goals and scales? Stop being so vague,” Montgomery interrupted. “We believe the Galra have been visiting this planet for over 10,000 years.”

_We? Who’s “we?”_

Allura never said how long she’d been on Earth, and, he suddenly realized, that didn’t necessarily mean the Galra hadn’t been here just as long or longer.

At the end of the corridor, another door awaited them. Montgomery pulled a tarnished brass key from her pocket, and only after several minutes of struggle with the old lock did the door swing inward on creaking hinges. She ushered them into a cavernous space carved from the mountain and now used as a storage warehouse. Striding down the concrete aisle, the sound of her boot heels echoed through the chamber. Filing cabinets and steel racks made up evenly spaced rows, seemingly endless and designated by alphanumeric codes on the shelves and drawers in army green embossing tape that decades ago, some peon been assigned the mindless task of punching out and affixing.

She continued, “Consider the scenario where the people of Earth have an army capable of operating Galra ships, of infiltrating the Galra military, the _empire_ from the inside-”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Keith interrupted.

“I absolutely am,” Montgomery agreed, stopping and checking the labels on the shelving unit. She unhooked the bungees and lifted the first box onto a shelf, shoving it all the way to the back of the deep unit. Keith grabbed the second and placed it in front of the first. He put the last one next to the second. Montgomery pulled a new, printed label from her pocket and pressed it onto the edge of the shelf.

“Thank you. Your own mother was an undercover operative. Galra have incredible genetic adaptability. Her ancestors - yours - hailed from all across the known universe.”

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this. It’s weird.”

Mariko patted his arm but didn't look at him.

"Let me show you something." Montgomery walked back the way they came, pulling a pair of disposable gloves from a pocket in her coat and tugging them on as she searched for something. She finally stopped, pulling out a shelf with an old steel security box with a combination lock set into the lid. The enamel paint had chipped off the corners decades ago, and handprints marred the dense layers of settled dust. She scrolled through the number dials and when the final one clicked into place, popped the mechanism. Lifting the lid, she carefully removed a flat, circular object wrapped in cloth, barely a foot in diameter. Keith watched her unpack it, struck with wide-eyed recognition when she uncovered the symbology on the cover of a golden disc.

“That’s one of the Voyager records.”

“Yes. It was found in a small cave out in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. I could give you the coordinates, but I think you’ve already been there.

“That’s not possible. It was made in 1977.”

“We know. It says so on the record. It’s also been dated; that’s why it’s here. Do you know what it was electroplated with to protect it in space?”

“Uranium 238,” Keith paused. “Which has a half-life of…” he glanced at Mariko, “a couple billion years?”

She shrugged. "Why are you looking at me? I'm just the geneticist."

“4.5 billion years,” Montgomery filled in. “We’ve had this analyzed several times. This record, made almost 40 years ago, is at least 10,000 years old.”

“10,000 years ago, we were farming and domesticating _cows_.”

Akira Kogane chuckled, a deep guttural sound that rattled in his lungs, then, seemingly aware, he covered the noise with a loud snort as if clearing out his sinuses. He spat the wad of mucus and phlegm on the floor.

Mariko rolled her eyes. “Disgusting,” she murmured.

He winked.

Montgomery went on. “At some point in human evolution, something kick-started our path to technological advancement.”

“Language,” Keith stated. “You know that’s one of the ancient astronaut theories, right? That aliens came and gave us language.”  

“Mmmhmm. What is that was given to us by the Galra? We still aren’t sure what their average lifespan is, but they live a very long time. They very well might have played a role in our evolutionary development. I should mention it has recently come to our attention that not all the planets under Zarkon’s thumb have been sucked dry of resources. We think the plan for Earth is, or rather _was_ , to use it as a renewable energy source.”

"Actually," Mariko added, "the Galra might be at odds over that amongst themselves unless things have really changed so much since I worked here?"

Montgomery shook her head. “The insurgents were here for some years, and they were not concerned with discovery.”

“You know, I didn’t think this could get worse than an episode of one of those ridiculous alien shows, but it is,” Keith said.

“Weren’t you on an episode of one of those ridiculous alien shows?” Mariko countered, ribbing him with one sharp jab of her elbow.

Keith stiffened. _So what if it was true?_

Mariko narrowed her eyes, one finger to her lips in mock contemplation. “Ancient astronaut theorist, a former pilot in the U. S. Air Force with a master’s in astrophysics, goes by Kevin Goldman?”

He wanted to wilt on the spot. In all fairness, he only objected to the sensationalization of the facts, yet the embarrassment was like waiting for the hollowed out cavern to collapse; it wouldn’t happen, but he could hope. “Anyway, how did the Voyager disc find its way into a North American cave 10,000 years ago?”

“We’re not sure, exactly.” Montgomery glanced at Mariko, one brow arched high on her forehead. “But you’ve seen the glyphs, haven’t you?”

He waited for her to continue.

“There are representations of what appear to be Galra ships on the cavern walls. Tell me how people thousands of years ago would have been able to render that imagery with such accuracy if they hadn’t seen it in person.”

“You’re talking about the cavern where the Blue Lion was housed.”

“Yes,” Montgomery confirmed, “and we believe the images indicate peaceful relations between the people of Earth and the Galra _long before_ that Lion fell to Earth.”

 

+++

 

Lance poured half a cup of joe, tore through four packets of sugar, dumped them in, then filled the remaining space with half-and-half. Stirring the concoction, he took a sip, smacked his lips, and grinned, leaning beside the sink, blocking Allura from the coffee pot on Keith’s narrow counter. “See, I like my women how I like my coffee-”

“With cream?” Keith plucked a string on the ukulele and cringed as he twisted the tuning peg.

Pidge spat her drink back into her cup, coughing. Hunk patted her back, shrinking into the cushions as Allura glared menacingly, first at Keith before slowly turning her attention to Lance.

“Geez, Keith, why are you like this? It’s ‘hot and strong.’”

“Nope. Whatever concoction you just made is lukewarm and _creamy_.”

Coran bent over to smell the contents of Lance’s cup. “I do believe he’s right.”

Allura grumbled.

“Hey! It’s better than stale and bitter.” Lance chugged half of his drink and slammed the mug down, spattering the rest of his beverage across the backsplash.

“Lance...” Allura warned.

Dejected, he sighed and slinked over to the table, motioning for Hunk to make room.

Keith picked out the tune of dueling banjos, frowning. “Are you sure I actually played this? It sounds terrible.” From behind him on the back cushion, Red pressed all four of her paws against his head and stretched, pushing hard.

“Eh,” Lance lifted his shoulders, palms up. “Sounds fine to me.”

“Only because you’re completely tone deaf!” Pidge smirked.

He shushed her. “I had to search no fewer than five thrift shops to find those ukes.”

“You put that much effort in?” Hunk’s forehead hit the tabletop in disbelief.

"I take my responsibilities seriously, I'll have you know, and making sure mullet didn't self-destruct was my prime objective." Lance twisted and leaned over the table to Keith. "Kept you occupied, right?"

The corner of Keith’s mouth ticked up in amusement as he shook his head. “What are you even talking about?”

“Hey, Allura, did you get the repairs done on the shuttle?” Pidge asked, changing the subject.

“It’s functional. I can’t get it powered to full capacity, but it should get us there and back again if necessary.”

“You have to go tonight.” Pidge turned the laptop around to show her the figures. “The geomagnetic storm is supposed to start around 2100 hours. It will mess with their signals. We can use it for cover.”

“It will mess with ours too,” Hunk added.

Keith put the ukulele down. “Can you work around it?”

“Unlikely.” Hunk frowned.

"I think we're all going to be on our own," Pidge said, shifting her gaze to Lance, chewing briefly on the inside of her lip. "Still up to flying us out to Green and Yellow?"

“It’s a big responsibility,” Allura added, playing to his ego with a shift in tone from her earlier annoyance. “but I know you can do it.”

“Of course I can.” Lance perked up, leaning over the table and beaming at her warmly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Keith looked at him skeptically, tipping his mug to his lips. Empty. Craning his neck, he peered around Allura to check the coffee pot. Also empty. He’d have to make more. Instead of making everyone move, he slipped half-way under the table, about to escape when Pidge tapped him on the shoulder.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

He turned around, resting his arms on the bench and looked up at her. “Sure.”

From one of the pockets in her cargo shorts, Pidge produced a small, circular device. “I was able to hack into the data log on the fighter when we got back. I meant to tell you, but-”

“It’s fine.” He didn’t want to talk about their time on base.

"Anyway, if the central computer works the same way on that battleship, this should let me sync up with some of the data libraries. I know it's a long shot, but if there's any chance my dad is still out there…" Her voice shook, subtle but determined. If there were even the smallest chance of finding something related to her father's disappearance, she would take it.

Keith admired her moxie; he had from the first time they’d met.

She pressed the device into the palm of his hand and closed his fingers around it with a gentle squeeze. “Put that on anything that connects to the mainframe. It should link up on its own and transmit back.”

Nodding, he crawled out and set it on the counter with his mug. There was something else he’d almost forgotten about, but would probably need for his mission. Squeezing past Coran and Allura and tuning out the chatter behind him, he abandoned his coffee and instead began his search for the infrared goggles Hunk had given him for his birthday.

Opening the kitchen drawers, he started rummaging through the contents.

“How are we going to play the Atari?” Hunk asked the table. “Keith doesn’t have a TV.”

Pidge grinned. “I picked up an old CRT monitor from the thrift shop dumpster so we can have the full retro gaming experience.”

"It's gonna be a par-tay at Keith's place!" Lance hollered in jubilant sing-song.

“Right.” Keith rolled his eyes. “’Cause what better timing than when I’m not going to be here.”

Lance waved it off. “Whatever, man. You get alone time with Allura in tight quarters. All I get is-”

“Freeway!” Pidge shoved the game cartridge in his face before he disgraced himself further.

“You’d better do all your gaming now,” Allura said, “When we leave for the Red Lion, I expect the three of you to be ready to bring home the other two still out there.”

Keith finally managed to locate the goggles, slipping the strap around his head and adjusting the fit. The ability to detect heat signatures would come in handy if the battleship were as dark inside as the fighter. If the military had gone to all the trouble of engineering him, why hadn't they done a better job? He could have had infrared vision, then again, he was more than strong enough with regenerative healing capabilities and, in a manner he assumed was intentional, passed through an unsuspecting world _most_ of the time. He’d spent a good portion of his life trying to convince himself, and by extension everyone else, that he was perfectly normal, perhaps even mundane with general interest but eclectic hobbies like motor vehicles and space.

_Stop pretending. You’re not human._

Details. He'd been handed his guilty verdict and impatiently awaited sentencing, yet it remained a thing like the idiomatic elephant. Nobody wanted to be the first to bring it up, and that had begun to bother him.

Turning on the thermal imaging filter, the goggles transformed the world around and tore it apart from the inside out. Warm bodies pulsated with life, not a movement missed over the cinematic scape of his vision. Allura and Coran appeared grayer, likely from lower body temperatures, while Hunk practically radiated heat onto Pidge and Lance.

His cat’s shallow breathing bespoke her deep slumber on the back of the seat, heightened by the black and white contrast of this new world. Turning toward the window, he held out his hand, whiter than anyone else’s, white like the sun through the window glass, holding its own over the horizon.

Keith wondered what Shiro was up to, thinking about going to check on him before sweeping that thought to the dustiest corner of his mind. Truth be told, he was still upset.

 

+++

 

Shiro popped another cheese puff into his mouth and chewed, lying prone on top of his comforter. He found himself in the pit of a great depression that had swallowed him whole, slowly dissolving him in its acid belly as he waited for the end.

_I am already dead inside._

Licking his fingers and scraping the sticky orange powder off with his teeth, he tried to think about something else.

The kale crisps made an arguably better snack choice, but he preferred the cheese puffs and only bought the leaf chips because he had this idea cemented in his brain that eating “healthy” would improve his figure.

How many times had Keith returned from the store with cheese puffs because those were Shiro’s favorites? He remembered those details and Shiro didn’t have the heart to tell him not to buy them.

_Keith._

_No, no, no._

Oscillating between death by cheese puffs and his doomed relationship did him no favors, but he couldn’t help it.

_Keith._

_How long has he known he’s part… Galra?_

Allura hadn’t been able to answer that, but she admitted to having known for some time. Shiro suspected Keith hadn’t known until recently.

_“He’s half-human with a mix of genetic information from several extraterrestrial species. That mix just happens to be primarily Galra.”_

_What does it matter, anyway?_

It didn’t, but he shuddered involuntarily. Memories came trickling through, suspended in the primordial sludge of his consciousness with no apparent purpose other than to annoy, like scraps of plastic in the ocean, seemingly harmless at first until the whole place became saturated with it and he couldn’t take a single breath without swallowing the shards. Images flooded his mind, of sterile cells, one, maybe two rounds a day in the arena.

Shiro pulled a pillow over his face. How could he have forgotten? He had been stronger then, yet rare was the match won on strength alone and every kill another win for his record. He recalled them from someplace far and dangerous, flashed one by one upon the screen of his virtual mindscape. Every opponent he had ever faced waited for him, for this moment, branded into his thoughts.

_You did that. You._

_Own it!_

_I did that. Me._

There was justice yet in the irony of his missing hand.

_You practically begged them to take it so you wouldn’t have to live with yourself._

Did it make him a monster because he had wanted to survive?

_Denial won’t heal your soul._

Was there anything redeemable in that revelation? His eyes burned, and he coughed into the pillow.

It smelled like Keith.

No wonder Keith didn’t want to talk to him, not to mention, the last time he’d tried, he’d shoved his foot so far back down his own throat it had lodged there and was still stuck.

_Go back to your cheese puffs. Pity won't heal your heart._

He doubted he’d even be able to choke on one; they disintegrated so quickly he hardly had to chew, just inhale.

Shiro sighed.

Maybe he really was running away from his problems, like Keith had said. His phantom fingers ached. His head hurt as if trapped within the jaws of a vise, slowly clamping shut on whatever remained of the gray matter behind his eyes. Apparently, it had not yet turned to soup. He needed to take his meds; his attempts to cut back hadn't exactly been working.

_Don’t do it!_

If he did, though, he'd feel like a person, and Shiro wanted to feel like a person, not the trampled thing he presently embodied. He had to come up with a new angle. He had allowed himself to become complacent, relinquishing his dreams, his hopes, his life. He didn't hate his job but found it wasn't what he wanted for himself, and the only thing that made it worthwhile was the people he worked there with. He didn't like his empty apartment, but he hadn't made an effort to improve it either. He had heinously misjudged the one romantic relationship he'd bothered to pursue.

What could possibly get worse if he just took the damned drugs and let it consume him? Nothing mattered anymore. He threw the pillow across the room.

Kuro chirruped and rubbed his broad face against Shiro’s. Blood still prickled from a scratch across the cat’s nose, a battle wound sustained in a scuffle the previous night. Shiro had somehow managed to shoo off the other tom, and in the interest of Kuro’s personal safety, had plucked him up and hauled him inside biting and yowling.

“You’re grounded, remember?” he chastised.

The cat settled on his chest and yawned, placing two soft front paws on his mouth.

_Love you, too._

Shiro stretched, shoving his hand behind his head, pushing against the wall. The futon’s wooden slats and lumpy mattress assaulted him in all the wrong places. Someday he’d buy a real bed, though admittedly, he’d hoped he could just borrow Keith’s. His fingers brushed against something cold and hard. He grabbed it, pulling the Black Bayard out from it’s hiding spot.

_I almost forgot about you._

_“Shiro.”_

He shoved the cat off.

_“Shiro.”_

Great, now he was hallucinating voices. “Shut up.”

_“I need you.”_

“I said-” Oh. _Black?_

It had to be her.

He dragged himself off the bed, tried unsuccessfully to smooth his messy hair down as he hunted around for his arm. “Have you seen it?” he asked the cat.

_It. Yeah. Like he’s going to know what “it” is._

Kuro meowed a high-pitched noise and scuttled under the bed, dragging the prosthetic arm out as he re-emerged moments later.

Sad.

“Thanks, buddy.” He reached out to pet his friend but was met with an unfriendly swat instead.

_“Shiro!”_

This time it came with a resounding urgency. He needed to hurry.

Somehow, Shiro managed to get himself out of the apartment in one piece. He still wore his flight suit, and catching a whiff of it had him swallowing down his own bile. His combat boots pinched, and his feet felt mushy and cramped. Looking at the sky, he couldn’t tell the time. Either the sun was rising or setting, but what was the difference, really? Both were beginnings and ends.

Shiro ran hard through his brain fog, exercising his lungs and his burning legs all the way to the restaurant. Right hand over the cellar keypad, he was about to burn out the lock when the door burst open, and Coran stepped out, blinking in surprise looking up at him.

“Shiro!” Coran slapped his thigh, suddenly beaming as he tugged at one waxed end of his mustache. “Come to take that Lion downstairs for a rousing rumble through the ol’ blue yonder?”

"Uh," he panted, wiping the sweaty fringe off his forehead and trying to get his bearings. He hadn't noticed how hard he'd pushed himself until he stopped and suddenly needed to catch his breath. Bending over, he braced his arms above his knees. "Yeah," he coughed out, "you know, if she'll have me." Shiro couldn't help but laugh at himself.

“Well, I can think of about,” he counted on his fingers, “six reasons why she wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Someone’s got to fly her.”

Coran fixed on the Bayard in Shiro’s hand.

_“And apparently, it isn’t going to be me.”_

Shiro shook his head. Coran hadn’t really said that, and he hadn’t heard it, had he? Just his imagination. He pressed his palms against the sides of his head in a weak attempt to quell the twinges of a headache from his temples. “I’m going to try.”

Coran clapped him on the back as he shouldered past. “Good luck to you,” he called.

Shiro rushed down the stairs, fleet and sure, sensing the path as the Black Lion urged him on. Each step bringing him closer.

Grunting, and shaking out his headspace, he paused before her. The barrier down, she crouched, rear in the air, her tail high above as if ready to pounce. She had stretched out her head, chin over one paw,while the mangled remains of the missing one remained a smear of oils and ichor and a golden ooze.

_Quintessence._

Kneeling beside it, he ran his hand through the sticky substance, letting it dribble off his fingers. It sparkled in the dim violet glow of the room and the golden burn smoldering from the sockets of her eyes.

Strangely, he felt _better_ , and when the Lion opened her jaws, he raced in without a second thought.

_“We have to go.”_

She led him to the cockpit, the path alight through panels like translucent glass.

Cautiously, he sat in the pilot’s seat. The console flickered to life, and momentum suddenly shoved him backward, knocking the wind from his chest as the Black Lion sprang forward. Shiro grabbed the manual controls, but they held fast as she tore across the room, out through what he now saw was an underground hangar. Above them lay the dampening sky, and with propulsion at full throttle, she jettisoned into the air.

 

+++

 

“You’re sure it’s _this_ ship?” From the shuttle’s windshield, Allura glanced skeptically from one Galra battleship to the other. “There is so much quintessence here I can’t…” she faltered. “I can’t sense the Lion.”

Keith couldn’t either. Logically, he had no way of knowing which ship the Red Lion was on, but his instincts told him it was this one, and they rarely let him down. “Pretty sure.”

"If you say so. Anyway, I don't think anyone knows we're here." Finally conceding, Allura handed over the controls to let Keith dock the small pod, suctioning it to the hull of the destroyer.

“Thank Hunk, Pidge, and that coronal mass ejaculation we just flew through.”

“ _Ejection_ ,” Allura corrected.

Keith raised a brow. “We shot the moon.”

Allura had no reply. Instead, she rummaged around in her supply bag. "I know you don't want it, but I appreciate your willingness to do this."

She handed Keith the Red Bayard, and he secured the grip beneath his belt. “Don’t pretend I’m doing it for you.”

“I’m not.”

He positioned the infrared goggles on his face before stuffing his hair down the neck of his space suit. Sliding his helmet on next, he sealed it to the collar. Thin, lightweight, and a deep, velvety black, these garments more closely resembled diving apparatus than standard astronaut fare. Montgomery had called them experimental, which Keith took to mean “reverse engineered from extraplanetary technology.” He flexed his fingers.

“You ready?” he asked Allura.

She nodded, checking the seal on her helmet before leading the way to the pressurization chamber.

Following behind, tension already creeping over him, Keith wished he’d indulged his addiction one more time before they’d left Earth. He intended to quit smoking; he just hadn’t been trying very hard. Right now he wished he’d done better. Perhaps if he had, Shiro would have as well.

_Shiro._

What were they going to do if he brought the Red Lion home, but no one could pilot Black?

For now, he just needed to focus on the task at hand.

He grabbed his small sack and followed Allura as he checked the contents. Pidge’s device was there, along with some tools and the packs of gum Coran had given him back on the base.

“Keith?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re distracted. Is everything all right?” Allura asked.

“As all right as it’s going to be.” They could talk about it later. Keith tossed the bag over his shoulder, pulled the door shut behind him and cranked the lock tight, depressurizing the small room. , and threw up the hatch, sealed to the shell of the Galra ship, a dusty mauve in the strange light beyond the reach of the sun. He pulled out the thermic torch Coran had equipped them with and attempted to cut into the metal, with no effect. “Crap. It’s just like the fighter.”

“Here. Let me.” Allura touched the surface, drawing a circle with her fingers just large enough to pass through and placing both palms on the surface. A passageway instantly opened, the metal crashing through, droplets and smears of golden quintessence lining their way.

She grinned at Keith’s surprise. “Everyone has to have some secrets.” She jumped through landing lightly below.

Keith tossed her their supply bags and followed, squeezing his shoulders through the tight opening. “Like Lotor?”

“Ugh!” She cocked a hip, one hand on it waiting for him, the other flippantly waving the air in disgust. “I hate that guy!”

“I think he kind of likes you.”

Keith wriggled through. It had been a long time since he’d felt too big to fit through tight spaces. Brushing himself off, he flipped up his visors to see better in the dimly illuminated galley then turned on the thermal imaging feature of his goggles, marveling at the clarity with which he could suddenly make out the characteristics of the ship. He had guessed right: based on the controls in the fighter and the consistent temperature regulation, Galra saw a different visual spectrum than he did.

He inhaled, having forgotten entirely about testing the air before breaking the seal on his visor. Stale and heavy, he filled his lungs with air and exhaled, the combination of elements leaving him surprisingly refreshed.

“Pffft.” Allura flipped up the visor on her own helmet and looked around.

They stood on a small ramp near the ceiling, somewhere at the end of a dark passage. Keith couldn’t tell if this was where the Red Lion had taken him in his dream or not. Everything looked the same.

“Sure you’re not sweet on him?” He said it just to say something, while he tried to picture his bearings. It wasn’t working.

“I am not!” she answered quickly. Recovering herself, she added, “Maybe I was, but he’s really just a pestilence. I can’t decide if he’s trying to impress daddy or plotting to kill the man, and there’s no getting a straight answer out of him either! You think he’s telling it like it is, but that’s never what he means!”

Keith snorted back his laughter.

"It's not funny!" Closing her eyes and exhaling closely, she worked her hands as if pulling at an unseen force, the aura around her growing as she doubled her size, matching her skin tone to the sickening purple haze that surrounded them.

“Shit!” Keith took a step back.

“Secrets.” She leveled him with her gaze. ”Galra aren’t the only ones who can shapeshift.”

Shiro had said that Sendak only made himself look human. Keith hadn’t entirely believed it at the time.

“You might be able to do this too!” she added excitedly.

“I-” he paused, “Wait. You’re not upset that I’m…” he couldn’t say it.

Gravely, she shook her head. “Keith, are you any different now than you were before you knew? If anything, it gives you some context.”

He nodded slowly.

“No one gets to choose the form through which they walk this plane. Besides, you’re my Red Paladin; you’re irreplaceable. Come on, ‘prisoner,’” she grinned, prodding Keith forward. “Let’s go find a control room.”

_Right._

Keith stumbled, catching himself in stride. “Yes, ma’am.”

The Red Lion gave no reply when he called her. He and Allura were on their own.

 

+++

 

The Black Lion dug her claws into the side of the battleship, anchoring herself to its underbelly.

Out of sight, out of mind.

_So what now?_

A flash of blinding light enveloped him, and Shiro found himself deposited face down on the ground someplace new. Pipes and casements lined the walls up higher than he could see. Noisy vents puffed clouds of steam into the air that wafted lazily around and refused to dissipate. Panels stood stacked against a wall, gaping holes left open in the housings to reveal bundles and twists of wiring. Clumps of dust clung to the cables like delicate strings of Spanish moss.

No one had disturbed this place for a very long time.

He managed to stand in the simulated gravity, but a wave of nausea overcame him, and he careened against the nearest wall, catching himself before he fell, hoping it would soon pass.

_I’m on the ship._

_Why did you bring me here? Black?_

A considerable force struck Shiro from behind, knocking him off his feet. Everything in his field of vision smeared and blurred before coalescing to nothing and slowly returning to focus. He became an onlooker, watching as if through a camera.A tall, broad, Galra officer scruffed a smaller figure, steering him roughly along the passage. Shiro recognized Keith immediately by the fluid, cat-like way he moved. Most of Keith's face remained hidden by his helmet, leaving only his nose visible, slightly, _adorably_ , upturned beneath the impossibly useful goggles. Shiro had been the one to suggest that gift to Hunk, thinking it would be a fun gadget for Keith to play with when he went traipsing off into the desert doing whatever it was he did out there. Instead of protesting or fighting back, however, Keith appeared to be joking with his captor, whose shoulders shook with mirth before remembering their role and gruffly propelled him on again, turning into a room. By the symbol designation outside the entrance, Shiro identified it as a command hub. Inside, the officer carefully shut the door behind them while Keith made for the central computer, gloved hand to the touchscreen. The spacesuit, to which Shiro's gaze now traveled, was new. It clung like a second skin to Keith's svelte form, dipping in with the dimples at his back and the slight curve of his waist. The velvety surface masked nothing, and the silty reflection of the ambient light highlighted even the slightest movement, each tightening of a tendon, the strong lines of his legs, the subtle shift of his weight as he leaned in toward the console, the slight cleft between his pectoral muscles when he twisted around that-

Shiro licked his lips, trying very hard not to think about it. Surely the Black Lion hadn’t brought him here to stare at Keith. Sweat beaded across his forehead and dripped down through his fade.

He searched for the inevitable underwear line. It did not exist.

_Pay attention!_

Keith called the officer over, tapping his fingers against the side of the unit impatiently.

As soon as the officer turned to face him, Shiro knew he’d seen that face before, in fact, she looked like…

Allura?

Definitely Allura, only much bigger and purple, having somehow increased her mass to fill what Shiro now recognized as half a Galra uniform. To his eyes, she looked passably official with her fat, silvery braid pinned like a crown around her head. A Galra breastplate and other scavenged accouterments had been fitted over a suit similar to Keith's. Shiro had to admit, she cut just as fine a figure.

They looked at the schematic together. Keith pointed to the largest hold. It had to be the Red Lion. What else could it possibly be? But why would they come alone?

And why hadn’t anyone told him?

_“Have you checked your phone?”_

He’d forgotten he was broadcasting. No wonder Keith found the Lions annoying.

Had Black been listening in the whole time?

_“Yes.”_

Allura clicked her nail against the screen over a smaller area on a different floor. Handing Keith a bag, she then turned and left. He shut the door behind her,pulled a small, round device out of it, pulled a pink wad from his mouth, and used that to stick the object up beneath the console.

Again from the pack, Keith pulled out another stick of gum and popped it in his mouth, careful to drop the silver wrapper back into his bag.

Keith never chewed gum.

Shiro had no time to further question the scene Black shared. Footsteps approached, and he shook off the connection. He needed a place to hide. A mass of cables and wires like entrails spilling out across the floor from one of the largest housing units. He squeezed himself inside, pulled his knees to his chest, and held his breath, watching, hoping he wouldn't be seen. The door hissed as it unlocked and slid open, the visitor's long shadow a sinister portent stretching across the floor. Shiro recognized Lotor as he turned to look behind him, his profile catching the light from the adjacent hall. Even without the glamour of a more human appearance, Lotor looked about the same only larger, his features perhaps sharper and more angular. In the haze, Lotor's violet eyes appeared all the more vibrant. He wore the uniform of an officer, his platinum fell in a fat plait down his back. Fingerless gloves revealed long nail beds on each finger except for the thumb of his right hand. Although apparently in the process of growing back, it still remained stunted and short.

“Hmm.” Lotor sniffed, sighed, and then, just as abruptly as he had arrived, turned out of sight.

Shiro listened to his footsteps fade, exhaling with relief just as a hand reached into his hiding spot and yanked him bodily out, pulling him to his feet.

“Takashi Shirogane. _The Champion_.”

Twisting, Shiro tried to free himself, sending a sharp elbow wherever it might hit and unsuccessfully attempting to knee his captor in the groin. Lotor held him fast, wrenching him around as he sputtered, the breath forced from his lungs as he hit the wall face first.

“What are you doing here?” Lotor jammed his knee into the small of his back, hands wrapped around his wrists, pinning him to the wall.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Shiro growled.

“I would. But it doesn’t matter. I’m taking this ship, and unless you’ve got someplace better to be, it looks like I’m taking you with it.”

“Wait, what?”

Lotor spun him back around, so close Shiro could smell the permeating sweat through his light armored suit and feel his hot breath through bared fangs. Anger flashed in his eyes.

“I am _not_ allowing one of my planets to be destroyed over my idiot father’s obsession with Voltron.” A vein stood proud in the center of his forehead, throbbing with his ire.

“Your planet? Earth does not belong to you!” Shiro snapped his shoulder up, releasing the seal around his prosthetic arm and dropping to the ground, ripping it from Lotor’s grasp as he rolled aside.

“I’ve been looking after this planet for the last 10,000 years.” Lotor moved back, shifting his balance and lowering his stance. “You’ve been allowed to grow, develop, and explore the little solar system with your puny spacecraft, but this is not some back-galactic outpost.”

Shiro tightened his grip on the prosthetic arm, hefting the weight like a baseball bat. “But what about Allura?”

“Her conflict with my father is not mine.”

Shiro side-stepped the lunge, a fluid, measured movement, no energy wasted. “Wait. Then why are we-”

Something changed in Lotor’s face. “All of _this_. The creation of Voltron, my father’s descent into this senseless war-fraught rule. All of it started when a rift opened into this universe on my home planet. Something came through, something seeking the source of all life.”

Sweat dripped down Shiro’s neck and along the line of his jaw, holding his ground, waiting. “You mean? Quintessence?”

Lotor nodded studying him intensely, a sharp glint of gold in the catchlights of his eyes, shimmering around his hands, just like the glow of the Black Lion's quintessence. "Any simple measurement says more matter is here than there should be and based on what our scientists know came through, it hasn’t been completely accounted for, at least until now, I think." He flicked his wrist, and a broadsword materialized in his hand. "See, I thought I would find it when I found the Red Paladin. That Lion's quintessence signature is off the charts, it seemed the obvious answer, but I was wrong. Your energy is much more powerful than his."

“Wha-”

“I’ve changed my mind; you don’t get a choice. You’re coming back with me, Black Paladin.”

“No.”

Shiro blocked the blow and parried, holding his prosthetic arm as he would a very unbalanced sword, stepping in, but Lotor met him, controlling the motion with the hilt of his blade. It had been a long time since Shiro had done this, and the muscle memory, while present and instinctual, remained sluggish, buried beneath layers of self-doubt, broken esteem, and at least thirty pounds of extra fat. He tried to feint, but his opponent followed his every move.

_Stop telecasting._

Shiro chastised himself, he had no one else to blame for his body’s uncooperative torpor.

Sparks flew off the outer shell of his prosthetic forearm, shielding him from Lotor’s sword as it slid down the length.

Again.

He avoided the crushing arc of the blade, falling to one knee and sliding in, wincing from the force as he kicked out at Lotor's shin. Lotor stumbled and hit the ground hard, sword skittering across the room and disappearing into the fog of condensation pumping through the ventilation system. Shiro leaned forward to stand, but a sudden tight grip clamping around his ankle, pulling him off balance and back to the ground. His knuckles hit the solid metal floor, and his arm slipped from his grasp. He tried to flip himself around but a firm hand wrenched him up only to slam him back down like a sack of grain for the second time, legs pinned, wrist and the fabric of his other sleeve held as if by a vise over his head, unable to slip his short arm out from the one-piece flight suit.

_Shit._

He should have expected to be overpowered. While Shiro still shuddered at the memory of his time spent "dating" Sendak, he had not forgotten the sheer force of the man's brute strength. Even Keith, supposedly almost half Galra, possessed incredible physical prowess.

_You sure have a thing for strong men. Literally._

Footsteps approached, lightly at first, then louder until they stopped. Lotor craned his head to listen.

Shiro had to hurry. Snapping his head up, he bashed Lotor’s forehead with his own to a resounding crack.

Blinking and shaking it out, Lotor doubled down again, releasing Shiro's right arm, only to lock long fingers through his fringe, wrenching his head back, feet hooked over Shiro's legs.

“And to think you were our celebrity gladiator. Pathetic.”

Lotor had the right of it, Shiro had been the star. Although smaller and weaker, it was there he had learned to fight.

And he didn’t need to resort to taunts and insults.

“Shiro?” Keith yelled in startled surprise.

Back arched, Shiro could just make out the shape of him, visor down, gold sheen over the outer plate, but otherwise blending into the blackness of this abandoned corner of the ship. Upside down in Shiro’s vision, he ran toward them down the hall, dagger in hand. He threw it, spinning one full turn through the air before lodging in Lotor’s armor.

Looking down at the glowing sigil, light pulsated through the metal edge and throbbed against his suit. Lotor plucked the blade out, turning it over in his hands. “What- where did you get this?”

Keith didn’t answer but kept running.

From the hazy murk across the room, a great claw sped out toward the door. Keith ducked and leaped out of the way when it boomeranged back.

_Fuck._

“Nice to see you, Sendak.”

Sendak growled. “I’m not going to ask how you knew I was there.”

Keith probably still wore the infrared goggles.

Shiro bucked, twisting away and scrabbling the direction the sword had gone. Reaching out his fingers closed around the hilt. The tip dragged across the floor, carving a white-hot line into the pristine metal plating as he spun back around on his butt. He hefted it in his hand, leveled at Lotor.

_Breathe._

“Look. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’m not going anywhere with you.” Shiro stood, listening to the scuffle he could no longer see. He heard the sickening crunch of meat against metal and pushed it away. With each deliberate forward step, he closed in on his adversary. Lotor, back to a wall, had no place to go.

He held out Keith’s dagger as if to use it, Golden quintessence like ropes of energy surged around him, extending through the blade. He crouched, still ready to fight.

Shiro swung, grazing the shoulder of Lotor’s armor as he did, but had to pull the blade wide again to reposition himself.

Seizing the opportunity, Lotor stabbed, but the dagger dissipated in his hand and as his fist hit Shiro in the stomach, Shiro dropped the sword, sucking in his breath.

Pulling back to punch, a casing of smooth white and black enamel formed around Shiro’s hand like a gauntlet. The hit landed with a loud pop.

Lotor blinked several times. Dark violet-red blood stained his hair and dribbled down the side of his face.

_“Lucky.”_

He tried to steady himself, but Shiro took the opportunity to strike again and again.

“I am not going anywhere with you!”

"Shiro?" Keith called. Nursing one hand, a gleaming white and red sword in the other, he joined Shiro, leaving Sendak wheezing, flat on the ground over a mound of cables severed from the ceiling. Sparks like meteorites showered from above and pulsed with the quivering verve of a serpent's nest. A long saber pierced his armor through, beneath the shoulder and into the floor. Wrapping his hands around the hilt, Sendak pulled, dislodging it with a howl of pain. The symbol on the crossguard glowed brightly, and the blade reverted back to the familiar form of Keith's dagger.

Reeling as he stood, Lotor leaned back against the wall and laughed.

_“I could keep going.”_

Shiro heard him and glanced over at Keith in dread and confusion.

“You just don’t get it,” Lotor said, the hint of a small smile spread across his face. “Eventually, time is going to catch up with you.”

Shiro licked his lips, hesitating.

“I have better things to do right now than waste more time here.” Lotor brushed himself off and straightened his armor. “I’m still taking this ship-”

“Wait,” Keith interrupted. “I thought you were part of this crew. You told Sendak to leave the Lion and return; you wanted me - us - to hear that. Three, four days ago. Something like that.”

Sendak snorted, clutching his shoulder. “What part of excommunicated do you not understand, Red Paladin?” he spat through gritted teeth.

“Sendak, Just because you still have an in with the fleet, doesn’t mean-” Lotor warned.

“Stuff it, lovely locks.” Sendak snapped back. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”

Shiro’s eyes darted over to Keith. “I think he’s implying they were communicating with each other from Earth.”

Unable to contain himself, laughter burst from Sendak, full-bodied and throaty. “You’re such a funny guy, Takashi. I am absolutely implying that.”

Lotor rubbed his sinuses. “As I said, I’m taking this ship. Consider that your warning if you don’t want to be on it when I do.” He shouldered his way between them, flippantly waving a hand as he passed. He wrested the dagger from Sendak’s hands and tossed it underhand to Keith.

Sendak groaned, and Lotor kicked him in the ribs. “Get up. We still have work to do.”

Shiro turned to Keith, fingers lightly brushing the back of his gloved hand as he stepped back toward the entrance.

“What are you doing here?” Keith said, shaking out his hand with a muffled groan of pain.

“I’m not sure, the-” He stopped, not wanting to reveal how he’d come aboard with Lotor and Sendak so close by.

“They didn’t bring you here, did they?”

“What? No. Th-the Black Lion…”

The Red Bayard reverted back to its original form, and Keith absently hooked it into his belt as he took another step backward. His head snapping up as if listening to something Shiro couldn't hear. "Come on!"

Shiro stood perfectly still, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

“We can’t stay here!” Keith urged, “Allura’s trying to locate replacement energy crystals to repair her ship, and I have to find the Red Lion.” He paused, a slight tilt to his head in question before turning and started at a jog down the hall, picking up a bag dropped just past the entry.

Shiro looked down at the gauntlet the Black Bayard had formed around his hand. It reminded him of his dream, of the armored suits in gleaming white. He picked his arm off the ground and ran to catch up.

 

+++

 

The Red Lion's quintessence sent Keith into sensory overload, all he could do was keep on moving. His hand throbbed, his back stung from where he'd been hurled into the wall. His head rang with the sound of her voice and the frequency of Shiro's distress, panting to keep up, but those ailments dissipated in the miasma of his thoughts as he touched the handprint on the locking mechanism and waited for the doors to part.

In the center of the room, barely visible through the thermal imaging lenses, stood the Red Lion, protected by her honeycomb shield. No light shone from her dead, hollow eyes. No hint of familiarity crossed her stark, mechanical features. Tearing off his helmet, Keith threw it to the ground. He tugged the goggles from his face and yanked his gloves off, dropping them as he marched forward. Swaths of stunning color reflected off the surfaces of the hangar in myriad hues like mother-of-pearl from the facets of her barrier, intensifying the closer he came.

Both palms flat against the surface, he pressed himself up against it, feeling her warmth flow through him.

_Please._

What was she doing? He had come for her, just as she had told him to.

_“Come on!_ It’s me, Keith!”

Nothing.

Frustration mounting, he slammed his fists into the shield. The bones ground together in his injured right hand. He gritted his teeth and pounded again and again and again.

She refused to yield.

He fell to his knees in defeat. Leaning forward, he bowed his head before her. All this way. He had made it so far and for what?

_How could you ever think someone like you might be worthy of something like this?_

“Keith!” Shiro yelled.

He turned to see Shiro run across the room, a trail of drones hot on his tail. He skidded around, hand to the floor using his Bayard as a pivot, and felled them all with one swipe of his Galra arm.

From the microphone in Keith’s overturned helmet, Allura cried out, “What’s going on? Where are you?”

Another unit of drones came through the double doors, twice the number as before.

“Just get your Lion!” Shiro yelled, barely able to dance over the mechanical husks beneath his feet. He slipped and lost his footing, crashing to the floor.

_I can’t._

“Is that Shiro?” Allura cried out through the microphone.

“SHIRO! Look out!” Keith yelled, palms flat against the ground. With the full force of his energy, a golden surge blasted from his hands, steaming with the rising dust of quintessence spent as the orange flame licked his hands and fizzled out along the cuffs of his suit.

His broken hand stopped throbbing. The delicate bones no longer crunched when he clenched his fist, though it remained sore.

Unsteadily, Shiro got to his feet. The wreckage of drones laid twisted and melted around him. "Keith?"

The Lion’s barrier fell.

Suddenly, pistons hissed and metal creaked from the access door behind the Red Lion as it began to rise. The cold chill and shift in pressure advanced through the hangar.

_Someone’s trying to evacuate us._

He looked around but saw no one aside from Shiro. There were likely cameras, sending their footage to some well-hidden control room in real time like the one he and Allura had found earlier. The revelation struck him that this ship might merely be a lure, albeit with one very real Red Lion on board acting as bait.

The pressure dropped rapidly, and Keith tried to stand, only to slam back to the ground, sliding feet first toward the opening into nothing.

He made a grab for his helmet, but it rolled past him out of reach.

_Shit!_

Reaching within himself, Keith called the same power of quintessence he had just used, pulling himself to his feet, upright against the vortex of debris flying past. The fused mass of drones raised itself, reforming as a barrier between Shiro and the vacuum of space as he struggled to hold his ground.

The Red Lion opened herself behind Keith, and as her chin hit the smooth metal floor, he felt the warm rush of blood drip from his nose as it always did from so much quintessence. He didn’t have the time to deal with it now. Taking the steps two at a time, he raced up the ramp into the great, gaping maw of the consummate machine.

From inside the cockpit, Keith watched Shiro head back out of the hangar bay the way they had entered as he lowered himself to the seat. Instinctively, he grabbed the steering, feeling the low rumble as the Lion powered to life, and immediately sent her into reverse.

The Red Lion burst from the ship, and the door slammed shut behind her.

He pressed a button on what looked like a communications unit and, as if he had done it many times before, dialed in Allura’s radio frequency.

“Got her. Get off the ship. We’ll be right behind you.” He hoped. One hand on the steering, he wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve.

_We._

He’d left Shiro out of this for a reason, but he couldn’t let himself dwell on it now. Right now, he needed to find Shiro.

Where had he even gone?

_“It’s okay,”_ the Red Lion whispered. _“Black’s taking care of him. He needs to pilot her home.”_

 

+++

 

Shiro faceplanted behind the pilot's seat. Pushing himself up, his stomach heaved, and its contents spewed across the floor. He sat back on his knees.

“Why did you have to do that?”

The Black Lion shuddered as the creaking Galra ship recalibrated its trajectory.

With another lurch, he threw up again, bile burning his esophagus. His eyes teared, and he laid down on his side.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

Rubbing his eyes, Shiro rolled over onto his back. Each measured, shuddering breath rattled in his lungs.

She’d shown him Keith and Allura searching, respectively, for the Red Lion and supplies to repair a ship. What was the connection? Keith hadn’t needed him. He only knew Allura was even there because he’d seen her in the vision.

Yet the Lion had dumped him where Lotor would find him. She’d done it on purpose.

He didn’t even have to ask or wait for an answer to know that. He was supposed to encounter Lotor, but why, and what did he have to do with rifts and extradimensional beings anyway?

He had dreamed about it, sure, of being something other than himself, made of quintessence and cosmic dust, or floating serenely through everything and nothing, the darkness of the void and the unity of a brilliant white body at the center of a black hole. Those dreams comforted him. They made it feel like he had achieved a higher state, where he could _be_ , and where the act of being was more than a state of consciousness. Enlightenment, perhaps.

They always felt so real and waking up in his body of blood and meat was afterward a heavy load. It reminded him of Sunday school as a little boy and a commandment from the depths of Deuteronomy:

 

          Only be sure you don’t consume the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.

 

He’d asked his mother why.

 

_“You don’t eat your dinner unless it’s cooked, right? I have to cook it before you can eat it so you don’t get sick.”_

_He nodded, and she went on._

_“See, the Bible is teaching you to respect life, to respect all things living on earth. Another creature gave up its life so you can grow strong. The fact that we can understand that balance is part of what makes us unique…”_

 

Blood, like quintessence, but no longer a metaphor.

“I’m more quintessence than I am blood, aren’t I?”

The Lion didn’t answer him.

He lay there, prone, still queasy and waiting for the wave to pass. The last time he’d felt quite like this was just after he had been abducted. His Galra captors had transported him to a vessel similar to the one he’d just been on, shoved him inside an empty room, and left him alone to “acclimate” for what had seemed like days, but had likely been only hours. They had chosen him for a reason. “Quintessence signature” was the phrase thrown around outside the door to his cell. The same phrase Lotor had used. He had known that then and he knew it still. He had understood their language as well as his own.

He still did and admitting that scared him.

Sometimes he dreamed of his pregnant mother, curling up beside the growing fetus in her womb, fashioning himself the same. He'd already made friends with the experiment in her lab, maybe he could make friends with this one too.

Always so hopeful.

Yet the human form, so simply built, was also, quite simply, forgetful.

“This impending feeling…”

The Black Lion whined.

“I might not get to stay here much longer. That’s what you wanted me to know.”

If that was the case, then what about Keith? He could just break it off cleanly, take the responsibility on his shoulders alone.

_“So you’re saying you’d rather make his choice for him when that’s not even the choice you want to make for yourself?”_

“Won’t it be better this way?”

_“It’s up to you, but it seems dishonest.”_

She was not wrong. If Shiro did that and Keith found out, he would, more likely than not, never forgive it.

Never forgive _him._

And Shiro didn’t think he could live with that thought.

 

+++

 

“Thank you for the distraction, Red Paladin,” Lotor’s face appeared, uplinked through the communication screen and his voice echoed clearly through the Red Lion’s cockpit. “I have a ship, and you have your Lion. We’re even. Now get your crew and go back to Earth.”

_My crew? He thinks I’m the leader?_

“Why are you helping us?” Keith asked, not sure he wanted to know.

“Because it’s in my best interest,” Lotor said, closing the uplink before Keith could say more.

Whatever his involvement here, two things remained clear: he had little interest in the Lions, and he had just hijacked an under-staffed imperial battleship.

A thorough lesson in the history of Galra interaction with Earth was in order, though Keith could not imagine getting that any time soon.

On radar, he watched the marker for the Black Lion close in as he approached the rear of the ship. On the screen, she came into focus, clinging like an insect to the fuselage, vestigial wings folded back against her gargantuan form. He exhaled and wiped his brow, could feel her power waning even as he watched, quintessence like star-dusted honey dripping from her still-open wound. The Red Lion had the right of it; this was why Shiro hadn’t joined him.

The same symbol representing the Black Lion blinked on the video screen of the comms unit with a soft ping before patching automatically through.

“Keith?”

The connection sizzled as the signal adjusted itself, and as the initial static cleared, Shiro sighed audibly, slumping back into his seat.

Keith reached for the screen but stopped himself partway, pulling his fist up and clenching his fingers tight. "Right here." He tried to force a smile, but couldn't.

Allura was still missing.

He rotated the view from the cockpit, panning for any sign of her. Nothing. He’d have to check their docking point.

"Shiro? I need to-" he stopped, moving back around to the now empty space where the Black Lion had just been. The comms unit had gone black. "Shiro?" A hitch of panic resonated through him. "SHIRO?!" He called, louder this time.

After a short pause, Shiro replied, “Right beside you and ready to return home.”

Standing, Keith swallowed. The Black Lion had disappeared and reappeared exactly where Shiro had just said she was, thrumming contentedly, nudging Red with a friendly head bump that knocked him back down into his seat. From around the side of the Galra ship, the silvery glint of Allura’s craft steered toward them, skirting close along the hull.

The ship began to shimmer. Phasing in and out as Keith watched it, unable to tear his eyes away. The Red Lion rose and fell with the intensifying waves of energy emanating from the ship.

"It's entering hyperdrive, and we don't want to be caught in the wake! Go!" Allura yelled through the sputtering crackle of her radio. Sparks and streams of quintessence enveloped the silvery white shuttle as it darted on ahead. "You can tell me about the Black Lion when we get back to solid ground.”

“You get that?” Keith asked Shiro, still on the screen.

“Roger.”

Rolling backward and twisting around, Keith punched the engine, steering the Red Lion toward Earth. The Black Lion soared beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These last few chapters were hard to work out, so some of the things I wanted to put in here got pushed to 13, but the good news is I'm done! So I'll have 13 and 14 posted shortly. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!


	13. Finite Expiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Galra threat is imminent. The Paladins are going to have to form Voltron if they're going to save the Earth, but as Keith is learning, sometimes you have to save yourself first.

_We had the best-laid plans this side of a miracle._

 

+++

 

Something clinked against the window glass. Keith ignored it. The cat had made a warm nest of herself on his chest, engine rumbling low and steady against him. Disturbing her was out of the question.

“Keith!” Lance yelled.

He groaned. Red stood up, arching her back in a stretch that shook the tip of her tail. He reached up to stroke her fur and closed his eyes. Trilling contentedly, she kneaded her paws into his stomach.

“Yo! You in there?” Lance pounded his fist against the door, then slowly turned the latch and pushed it inward. “Keith?”

The door slapped against the frame behind him as Lance entered the camper. Keith cracked one eye, watching under the table from where he lay across the bench, laptop open with scraps of paper and pages of research notes strewn about, a coffee mug, and his headset. He’d been listening to filtered chatter from the Komar battleship, recording everything. The Red Lion helped him work through the dialect, and they had been at it for several days until he had collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

So here he was.

Lance kicked his sandals off at the door, set a rustle of plastic down on the counter, and stalked the length of the kitchen galley, knocking on the open bathroom door before passing and sliding the bedroom screen aside. He sighed, turning around.

“There you are!”

Keith pretended to be asleep, though he didn’t think anyone could actually sleep _through_ Lance, except, possibly, for Hunk.

Red hopped onto the table, crying.

“Did your daddy forget to feed you?”

“She’s playing you,” Keith replied, renouncing his right to continued slumber. He rubbed his eyes and heaved himself up. “Why are you here?”

“You are not answering your phone,” Lance announced. Receiving no response, he added, “And Blue says you’re moping.”

_You’re not the only one who can hear them anymore, and you’d better get used to it._

"I'm not moping," Keith said, leaving out the fact that he wasn't answering his phone because he'd lost it. His eyes ached and his heart hurt. As much as it pained him to admit, he really did need sleep. Or an Aspirin. Or a smoke.

Or a really good cry.

Maybe all four.

He buried his face in his arms.

Red howled then rubbed against his head, nosing her way through his hair to lick his ear, he tongue dry and soft as the looped half of a Velcro fastening. It tickled.

“Have you ever wondered why your cat is orange?”

“No.” He scratched at the spot his cat had just licked.

“Pidge says it’s sex-linked, like calico. That’s why so few female cats are orange.”

“What’s your point?” Keith mumbled.

“None. I’m just making small talk.”

Keith raised his head and slouched back into the cushion, taking the cat with him and holding her close, gently rubbing the soft spot between her eyes as she settled in. “Well, stop. What are you really here for?”

“I told you.”

“Nothing else?”

Lance considered that, scratching his head, pulling his fingers through his gelled-to-bed-head hair. “No. I mean… Okay, so I’ve been trying to figure this out. You really didn’t know you’re half alien, did you?”

“Galra and change,” Keith corrected, “and no.”

“But that’s why you can fly the saucer.”

“Apparently.” Keith thought he could almost see the inner workings of Lance’s brain spark and churn as so many pieces fumbled into place.

He took a deep breath, looked down at his feet and sighed. “So, why didn’t you want to tell us yourself?”

There it was, and it had been burning a hole in Lance’s pocket since he’d dropped it in there for safe-keeping, next to the five for a coffee and the shell of his first bullseye shot.

Keith shook his head. How did he know these things?

Somehow, he just did. Lance’s keys were still in the ignition. He’d eaten Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast with a sliced banana, and when he’d thought no one was looking, he had tipped the bowl to his mouth and finished off the milk. Keith wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Lance wore to bed, dreamed about, or felt at this exact-

_Shiro looked up at Pidge, popping another cheese puff into his mouth before she took the can away and snapped the lid back on. He wasn’t sure why she’d come over or why she now stared him down with her hands on her hips and a keenly stern expression, much like a drill sergeant. He didn’t want to listen, he just wanted to go back to bed, where he could ruminate over things he could not change and words he was almost too embarrassed to say._

The cat sprang from his arms, knocking his chin with her shoulder as she left, and breaking the strange mind link, recalling Keith back to himself. He wiped a trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

He'd heard it here and there, sometimes the words left unsaid, or desires not acted upon, but this now became more visceral, almost tangible and significantly more invasive.

“Keith?” Lance reached into a pocket, pulled out a pack of tissues, and tossed it to him.

Keith took one and wiped at his face.

"Why does that keep happening?"

Resting his forehead against the table, Keith pinched his nose until it stopped. “I don’t know. Lions?”

"If you'd been mauled by lions, you'd be a bloodbath."

"Tell me about it." Keith couldn't even force a smile at Lance's attempted humor.

Lance thought for a moment. “When did it start?”

“Couple months ago.”

“And you didn’t see a doctor?”

Raising his head up again, Keith stared at him.

_It’s just a bloody nose._

"You know," Lance went on, "I had a low-grade headache after taking Pidge and Hunk out the other day. Hunk never complains, but Pidge kept saying she was cold."

“What’s your point?”

Reaching out, Lance plucked away the tissue and patted Keith's hand, an awkward gesture, and he quickly pulled away. "That maybe the idea of quintessence sickness isn't all that far-fetched? Just because we can handle it doesn't mean it won't have any adverse effects."

“I’ve heard these Lions all my life.”

“It just means you’re more exposed than the rest of us.”

Even if Lance had the right of it, and it kind of made sense, Keith saw no way out. At least his body repaired itself relatively quickly.

_Like radiation poisoning, the higher the concentration, the more exposure, the sicker you get._

“Anyway,” Lance went on, “What were we talking about?”

Keith rested his chin in his palm. “I’m half alien.”

“Oh, right. Shiro got pretty upset with Allura. Don’t tell him I said that, by the way. Pidge had to remind him that you asked her to tell us. I’m not about to make presumptions, but were you afraid we wouldn’t believe you, or that we’d reject-”

“You know what? You can leave now.” Keith cut him off; he didn’t think he could face this too. Mentally blocking his thoughts came more easily, and he put up his walls before Lance could figure out how to pry for more.

“I see. Okay,” Lance said, but instead of leaving, he slid in, joining Keith behind the table.

Turning the computer toward himself and tapped the spacebar until it woke up. The lock screen asked him for a password. Keith watched with a wry smirk as he tried several times to get in before abandoning the effort.

“So, uh, Shiro bonded with the Black Lion. How about that?” He glanced at Keith then back at the screen.

Keith hummed, staring at his hands. He gripped the fabric of his shorts, balling it in his fists. Shiro had managed to wield enough quintessence to power the Lion, fly her to the moon, and bring her home again. Or perhaps it had gone the other way around? From everything Shiro had said, he had no idea what had really transpired. It might have been a little of both.

Allura had only managed to find enough energy crystals to charge the auxiliary power on her ship, but that would be fine for the time being. Pidge and Hunk had successfully retrieved the Green and Yellow Lions. That much he’d managed to get before he’d misplaced his phone. If he allowed it, Keith could hear them like he heard Blue, chattering away at him in her cavern.

Several miles away, the Red Lion crouched undercover in an ancient ravine, ready and waiting.

Black refused to speak.

Lance stood up and went to the kitchen to scrounge for food. “Are you hungry? I’ll make you something.”

"I said you can leave." Perhaps he hadn't said it with enough force, but he wasn't angry with Lance; he was mad at himself. Keith owed Shiro an apology, and "sorry" wasn't going to cut it. Making sure he didn't get left behind on an alien spaceship counted for nothing; that was basic decency, no thanks to the Black Lion.

Lance rolled his eyes. “You need to eat.”

Keith grunted acknowledgment.

“I’m making sure you’re alive and fed.” Lance poured a glass of water from a plastic bottle and slid it across the table. Some of it sloshed over the lip and dripped off the table onto Keith’s leg. “Drink that.”

He stared at it.

“You know,” Lance continued, “I have a pretty good handle on Shiro’s frustration.”

Keith refused to look at him.

“He’s not that complicated. Neither are you, really.” He stopped. “Are you listening to me?”

“No.”

“Anyway. What I can’t figure out is why you’re so self-destructive? What is Keith Kogane so scared of?” Lance tossed him a dish towel. “Check that out. Isn’t it cute?”

Slowly, Keith mopped up the spilled water. Embroidered along one end of the towel was the simple outline of a camper, a red truck, one lone Joshua tree, and a little orange cat against a desert skyline with the phrase, “Home Sweet Home,” written in the jet of a little bi-plane.

Lance threw a second towel, overhand. This one had the same image but with a red UFO like the one on his keychain instead of a plane and a night-time setting with little dots for stars. Keith assumed the big white and silver blob stitched onto the navy cotton was supposed to represent the moon.

“I meant to finish them for your birthday, but this beast needed a lot more work than we thought it did. It was kind of presumptuous of us to think you’d want people going through your shit to fix your home, wasn’t it? I would have been mad.”

“I-“ Keith stopped to consider what he was going to say. Lance had a destination in mind, and it wasn’t worth the effort to attempt to subvert him. “Sometimes people get overwhelmed.”

“That’s kind of a theme with you, isn’t it.”

_Dammit._

Keith smoothed the towels out side by side. “They’re very cute,” he conceded.

“Keith?”

_I’m listening._

“You need to stop making yourself miserable. Shiro thinks you hate him, you haven’t talked to anyone since, well, since you returned from your little escapade in the Galra warship. We let you have some space. I get it. Believe me, I do.Granted, it’s been less than a week, but you’re just sitting here doing - I don’t know what you’re doing.” Lance threw up his hands. “You left Allura to repair the Black Lion’s leg on her own. You haven’t spoken to anyone. Oh, and, you look like shit.”

Keith rubbed his face; having surpassed prickly, he tugged absently at the hair on his cheek. “You’re a real charmer, aren’t you,” he grumbled, but the corner of his mouth pulled up in amusement.

It was real, the whole nightmare, and it wasn’t one he was going to wake up from. He was waiting. At least that was what he told himself, just like Lotor had said, _“Eventually, time is going to catch up to you.”_

Maybe he should call Shiro. He couldn’t hurt worse than he already did.

_Later_ .

Lance rifled through the grocery bags. “Drink your water, go shower, shave, brush your teeth. Make yourself look like a person. Trust me, you’ll feel better.”

Keith obeyed, eyeing him keenly and tipping the glass to his lips. He gulped down the clear liquid as if it were the nectar of the gods. It dribbled down his chin, and he wiped his face on the shoulder of a shirt he'd been wearing for days. Lance had a point; he probably would feel better. Wallowing in misery wasn't going to fix the world.

_His_ world.

Forcing himself up, he shuffled blandly toward the bathroom. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, standing in the doorway, back to Lance.

“Because as much as you don’t want to admit it, you need a friend. And you’re my friend, so here I am.”

 

+++

 

Keith sat in the shower, back pressed against one wall, arms around his legs and chin against his knees.

_Don’t cry._

Days of silent repression hadn’t made the emptiness go away, and it needed to. He had done it to himself and had no right to complain that it just wasn’t fair.

He closed his eyes and let the water work its magic. It wasn’t going to fill the void, but there was a chance, albeit slim, that it would wash away his own ugly feelings before he drowned in them.

“You alive in there?” Lance banged on the door. “You’re running out of water.”

He already had. Lifting his face to the showerhead, one final drop plopped onto his nose. He got out, dried off, and wrapped his towel around his waist before making his way to the bedroom to get dressed.

“I know you have jeans that show off your legs. You should wear those,” Lance yelled.

“Why do I need to show off my legs?”

“Because we’re going out,” Lance replied. _“Because Shiro likes your legs.”_

_I heard you._

“I’m not going out,” he called back, rummaging through the hamper for something clean. He told himself he didn’t care, but emerged in the one pair of fitted jeans he owned that hadn’t ripped through the knees, faded black to match the over-laundered, cracked, and peeling graphic on his Rammstein shirt with the half-plucked dead-eye eagle and the letters spelling out “Amerika” drawn to resemble the cut-outs of a ransom note. He tugged his red plaid shirt on over it.

Lance frowned. “I said we’re going out, not staying in. I know you have nicer things to wear.”

Keith pulled his hair back and tied it up with an elastic from his wrist. “Not here. Everything I bought for Thanksgiving got left with Shiro. I have a suit, but I don’t like wearing it. This passed the sniff test.”

Lance opened his mouth as if about to argue but instead shut it again and thrust a plate of food into Keith's face, one piled high with seared steak, russet potatoes, and something green and soggy. “Just eat.”

He took it two-handed with utensils and a paper towel and went to the table, mumbling quiet thanks. Red sprawled out beside him, and he carved her off the first bite.

Joining him, Lance sat down and began sawing at his own filet with a plastic butter knife, likely leftover from the birthday party. Some household items had materialized from the wreckage and yet certain things Keith just didn’t have, like more than one steak knife. Keith handed him the serrated one he’d been using, getting up to find his dagger, only to find it beside his plate when he looked back at the table.

"That wasn't there before," Lance spoke through his mouthful of food, hand over his mouth, watching pensively as Keith sat back down.

Keith shrugged, picked up the knife, and sliced off another piece.

“Look,” Lance went on, “if the Galra really are going to destroy the Earth with that Komar thing, you certainly don’t want to spend your time sulking in here.”

He had a point. “Fine. Where are we going.”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Whatever it is, it had better be good.”

Less than half an hour later, Keith found himself a passenger at the mercy of Lance’s driving. They parked off the main drag and walked through the still of early evening, too early for the nightlife, too late for the business crowd. Despite the endless chatter, in an obvious attempt to keep his mind occupied, Keith found himself thinking about the Lions. He knew they’d be called soon to mobilize. The U.S. military had no viable line of defense, and as far as he understood the situation, neither did anyone else. Somehow they had to get those Lions off the ground and running, yet for this one brief lull, the so-called Paladins remained free to do as they pleased.

He fell back, lighting a cigarette and taking the time to drink in the moment with his feet firmly on the sidewalk in a cityscape of concrete, twisting metal, and neon glow. This city would always embody a place of cheap thrills, where everything was larger than life and fantasy became reality.

_What happens here, stays here._

He willed himself forward, even as Lance waited for him to catch up.

"Hey! Lance! Keith!" Matt Holt waved, his other hand pushing the mass of shaggy auburn hair back from his forehead. "Perfect timing!" He winked and held the door to a dive bar situated between the restaurant fronts. Above it, a sign read, "PIT" with only the I lit up. Someone had written "80s Karaoke Night!" in pastel chalk on a sign propped up against the inside of the window.

Flanked by Matt and Lance, Keith had no choice but to go along. He dropped his smoke and ground it into the concrete before following down a staircase covered by a worn and dingy red carpet to the underbelly of the concrete metropolis.

Keith had steeled his resolve, prepared to descend into what nearly promised to be a seedy hellscape, but he hadn’t needed to. Still early, the bar wasn’t packed, but people milled about the floor, and the few tables had begun to fill. Security carded him at the foot of the stairs, giving his license a scrutinizing pass with a single quirked brow. Lance bowed out for the washroom.

“What’s the game, Matt?” Keith finally asked, scanning the room before deciding where to go.

"Special Ops." Spotting his sister, Matt held up a hand and raised himself up on his toes. "Pidge!"

Making her way over to them, she thrust a glass into Keith’s hand. “Here, you’ll like this. Glad you made it. Where’s Lancito?” She rubbed the back of her sleeve across her face, her eyes slightly glazed behind her glasses.

“Taking a piss-” Something caught Keith’s eye. “What is-” Shiro stumbled onto the stage, front and center, a sheet of paper in one hand, cheeks flushed as roses. Hunk stood at the base of the platform, arms crossed.

“Live band karaoke.” Pidge grinned. “I thought you’d like it.”

“But what is Shi-”

“Come on!” She insisted, cutting him off.

Keith continued to watch as Shiro turned, saying something to the guitarist.

When he didn't immediately follow, Pidge grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him through the gathering crowd, leading him to a small table in front of the stage, saved with an oversized backpack and pilled lime green hoodie. She piled her things onto the floor and sat down, pointing to a chair across from hers. "You can sit."

He did, gulping down half of the beverage in his hand, a dark, stout cider.

Matt planted his elbows on the back of his sister’s chair. “This is going to be good.”

“Don’t worry,” Pidge leaned across the table, gesturing to Shiro. “He’s completely sloshed.”

“That’s exactly why we should be worried!” Keith twisted around to see how far he was from the door; no doubt he could bolt through the gathering crowd and up the stairs. He might take out a few bystanders on the way, but it might be worth it.

Or not.

Lance headed toward their table with some fruity cocktail in hand. Holding his glass between his thumb and middle finger, Keith swirled the contents and resigned himself to fate as Lance pulled up a seat beside him.

Shiro turned around. Keith saw beads of sweat already formed at his temples and the beginnings of dark patches through his plain black tee under his arms and around his neck. He raked his prosthetic hand through his hair and grabbed the mic, intensely studying the half-crumpled sheet of paper in his other hand.

Keith rested his chin on his free hand, elbow propped on the table. Pidge whistled, and Shiro grinned widely, thumbs up, dropping the lyrics somewhere to the stage as the band started behind him. He spotted Keith, and eye to eye, flexing as he leaned forward, he spoke soft and low into the microphone.

“This one’s for you, Ke-” Shiro swallowed hard, “cupcake.”

_Cupcake._

Keith felt the color drain from his face. His stomach lurched. He glanced from Pidge to Lance, then looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking at him. He knew next to nothing about this establishment or the people who came here. Quelling the butterflies, he forced himself to sit. Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Matt wouldn’t take Shiro somewhere it wasn’t okay. Still, bolting held a lot of appeal; leaving meant he could avoid the acute embarrassment of this shameless display.

“Hey.” Lance placed both hands on his shoulders. “Loosen up. It’s fine. You’re fine. Shiro is _fine_.”

_No shit._

Swaying to the music, Shiro counted the measures aloud, clear that he knew the song by rote. “ _I had to escape, the city was sticky and cruel_ ,” he piped, off-key, feeling his way around the lyrics, eyes closed, inhibitions lost with the tune to the moment and inebriation.

“ _Maybe I should have called you first, but I was dying to get to you_.” He opened his eyes, locked to Keith’s as he smoothed down his shirt to the beat, the flat of his palm over his hip, thigh, finding his rhythm. “ _I was dreaming while I drove the long straight road ahead. Mmmhmm, yeah!_ ”

Shiro leaped off the stage, heading toward the table, so into what he was doing, he’d lost track of anything that wasn’t the song or the person he was singing it to. “ _Could taste your sweet kisses, your arms open wide, This fever for you was just burning me up insiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!_ ”

If Keith had been able to will himself into oblivion, he’d have done it right then. Matt wrested away his glass, and he immediately covered his mouth with both hands, transfixed in horror and sheer suspense. He cursed himself for ever wondering if Shiro were capable of this sort of intense liberation from the suffocating repression of his emotional battlefield.

He clearly was when drunk.

“ _I drove all night to get to you._ ” Shiro closed the gap between them, tightening his stomach and shoulders ever so slightly as he invaded Keith’s personal space with pleading brows, sultry eyes, and slight pout to the set of his mouth.

If that wasn’t deliberate sex-appeal right there, Keith had no other words for it. Shiro looked _lush_.

“ _Is that all right?”_

_Yes, yes it is._ But he shook his head to the negative, quirking an embarrassed grin and, palm to Shiro’s forehead, pushed him away. He bit his lip as he struggled to smother his own amusement.

Relentless, Shiro refusing the rejection, straddling Keith’s lap, arm slung over one shoulder. Pressed in so close, Keith could hear his own breath hitch in his throat through the microphone.

“ _What in this world keeps us from falling apart?_ _No matter where I go I hear-”_ Shiro shoved the mic in closer, forehead to forehead to finish the phrase.

_“-the beating of our one heart,_ ” they finished together.

Keith had never been so grateful to have a good memory for song lyrics with Shiro now beaming at him, radiant and glistening with sweat and lust and something else he couldn’t put a finger on. Driving home from collecting the Black Bayard, Shiro had only swapped to Roy Orbison after Keith had reluctantly admitted he didn’t like “Africa.”

Never taking his eyes off Keith, Shiro stood and continued his rendition of the song.

Shifting closer to Lance, Keith muttered, “I’m going to murder you.” Matt patted his back.

“No, you won’t.”

“Are you sure?” he countered, still riveted to the horror show. He took his glass back and drained it, considering a swap to bourbon and calculating the amount of liquor it would take to erase all vestiges of this evening from his memory. So invested he was in this line of thought, he missed the end of Shiro’s song, the clamoring applause, and lost his opportunity to escape as Shiro dropped to his knees and pressed his face hard between Keith’s legs, arms wrapped entirely around the chair.

“Let me up.” He rubbed Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro shook his head. “Mmm-nmmmm.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“He’s not getting up. He knows you’ll just escape,” Pidge giggled.

Shiro nodded. Uncomfortable, Keith squirmed, glancing around furtively. There was the bathroom option, the exit beyond the stage option, or-

“Oh my gosh. You are bright red!”

Keith tilted his face up to Hunk, nodding. His cheeks burned. Someone nearby made a comment he chose to ignore.

Shiro snored.

Aggravation, frustration, Shiro’s face smashed into his throbbing groin, the permeating scent of alcohol mingled with warm flesh and the inevitably building attack on his senses won out over any desire to not cause a scene. Two-handed, he shoved Shiro off, standing. “This isn’t a romance simulator! You can’t just shower me with sex-appeal, prey on my emotions, press the D-pad, then go to sleep!”

Matt howled with laughter.

Keeling back on his haunches, Shiro rubbed his eyes and raised his head up just enough to speak, eyes unfocused and glassy. “Let me take the sacrament on my knees, like the icing to your- oh, you don’t really like sweets…”

Keith clenched his jaw, avoiding Hunk’s curious glance, poignantly recalling the two bites of chocolate birthday cake he’d managed to put away out of politeness.

“How about the gravy on your sausage?” Shiro went on, “Or-”

“Shiro.”

Pidge clambered over the table and cupped her hand to Keith’s ear. “He’s had, like, seven or eight.”

Using the table for support and nearly knocking Pidge off, Shiro hauled himself to his feet, He swayed as Hunk steadied him, then stood for a moment to collect himself, holding up a finger.

“I’m serious now. Seriously serious.” Shiro blinked several times and swallowed hard, staring at his feet. “I miss you.”

Playing it off like he hadn’t heard was not going to work. His audience had curated itself, surrounded him, and Keith knew exactly why they were there.

_What else are friends for?_

Sighing, Keith conceded the admission. “I miss you, too.”

Not that it fixed anything.

 

+++

 

Shiro hadn’t lasted much longer. Matt and Keith took him home.

“I am not carrying you up those stairs. Move, or I’m leaving you here for your neighbors to find.”

After emptying the contents of his stomach all over himself, Shiro had somehow managed to crawl up the wrought iron staircase to his apartment unassisted.

Soiled clothes in the tub, prosthetic wrestled off, Shiro collapsed on his futon in his underwear, his rattling snores like the backfire of a blown out muffler.

Kuro swatted at Shiro’s face with the pads of a paw, then slinked away under the bed steadily growling.

Matt drove Keith home.

He climbed into bed, turning on the papier-mâché globe to watch the stellar projection march slowly across the contoured ceiling of the Airstream. Over and over again they trudged, relentlessly chasing time in pursuit of what? Perception was everything to the order of the universe. He still hadn’t sorted out his feelings, just kept ignoring them.

Or putting them off on Shiro. Because apparently, it was Shiro who had instigated this whole mess, as if it were his damned fault for having feelings.

_Do you ever think of anyone besides yourself? No? Better start doing that._

He got out of bed and made his way to the table where he’d left his laptop. The time read 3:06. He opened the messages app, noting the annoyingly high number of notifications, and scrolled to Lance.

**Thank you.**

Not knowing what else to say, he checked to see what he'd missed over the past few days. Pidge had sent several messages over the past few days, mostly that the only data she'd been able to extract from the battleship computer comprised a handful of incomplete navigational charts. The solar storm had distorted the signal past viability, and the battleship had long since left by the time she finally returned home after bringing the Green Lion back to Earth. A few hours prior, she had sent him pictures from that evening. The glow of sheer adoration on Shiro's face swelled his heart, and he held his breath when as he clicked a new text notification at the top of his screen.

**Shiro: Hey**

**Shiro: You there?**

Keith couldn't bring himself to respond. Instead, he returned to bed, thinking back to Thanksgiving. It was more than a statement or pretty words; Shiro had felt compelled to tell him, like a secret burning a hole in the recesses of his soul or a _confession_.

_You haven’t lost him yet, but you will. And when you do, it’ll be no one’s fault but your own._

That.

_You’re not a fucking robot. Stop pretending you are._

Keith buried his face in his pillow and tried to sleep.

Several hours later, he forced himself to get up. He ran, made breakfast when he returned, did his laundry, cleaned, paid his bills, and took care of his water problem. The overall effect made him feel somewhat less pathetic, having attained a modicum of adult competency. He’d even managed to locate his phone, dead as usual, in his truck. Keith plugged it in to charge and returned to his laptop.

Opening Shiro’s message window, he typed.

**So, cupcake.**

Staring at the line, for several long minutes, he deleted it and tried again.

**How are you feeling, hot stuff?**

Better, but he deleted the last two words before hitting return.

Almost immediately, the typing icon at the bottom of the text box blinked and several seconds later a reply dinged.

**Shiro: Like you pulverized my heart with a meat tenderizer and then ran it over with your shitty truck.**

Keith blinked and re-read the statement. He had asked.

**Shiro: Several times. It’s pulp. There’s nothing left.**

The animosity emanating from his screen sucker-punched him right in the gut.

It wasn’t the response that upset him so much as how far out of hand he’d allowed the situation to get. He’d done his best to perpetuate the wall of silence; it was his best defense.

In saying "I love you," Shiro had immediately and irrevocably altered the status quo. It added a gravity to the relationship, a certain weight, and a promise unspoken. That was where it had started, and Keith recognized his reaction bespoke his own genuine fear of commitment.

He didn’t like it, but there it was.

Grabbing his cigarettes and lighter, he went outside to stew in the blistering mid-day sun.

_I thought it was supposed to be December._

Sitting down in a sliver of shade beside the camper, Red crawled out from beneath, staring at him with her large, bright eyes.

Exchanging a long, hard look, Red turned her back to him and crouched, tucking her paws in neatly beneath her.

“Thanks. Just keep rubbing it in.”

He lit his smoke, sucked in a long drag, then with a great roar, he threw the cigarette as far as he could into the sand and grit, cherry still burning, a wisp of smoke drifting upward. Laying back in the dirt, Keith stared up into the limitless blue, wishing he could be so free, so untouched, even unfeeling if that would make everything disappear. He glanced at his tree, still there, the hardiness in its branches a testament to survival, it’s limbs like the twisted hands of drowning men reaching out, grasping at whatever it could if only for a shred of something to hold on to.

He’d covered for himself as best he could, but every truth, hope, and dream he’d ever had unraveled itself before his eyes.

Red yawned.

“I’m disgusting. Absolutely disgusting,” he said to no one in particular.

_You can’t play it off or make a bad joke about how your truck deserves better. You certainly don’t._

When he returned to his computer, Shiro had continued.

**Shiro: I’m sorry. I’m upset, and I didn’t mean to take that out on you.**

**Shiro: I might also have a hangover.**

**Shiro: I can’t find my meds.**

**Shiro: Are you there?**

**Shiro: The cat puked on my shirt.**

**You puked on your shirt.**

**Shiro: My calls aren’t going through.**

**My phone is charging.**

**Shiro: Are you busy?**

_No._

**No.**

**Shiro: I’m coming over. I’ll be there shortly.**

Keith sighed.

**Okay.**

 

+++

 

A quarter of an hour after texting, Shiro knocked on Keith’s door. After several minutes, he rapped again. This time the door opened and Keith stood there, arms crossed defensively.

“You usually just come in.”

Shiro shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I, uh-” he withered as Keith’s eyes moved with curiosity from his face to the open desert behind him.

"How did you get here so fast?" Keith searched Shiro's face for an answer, gaze traveling to the huge bouquet of flowers in his hand to the small, black gift bag with a large red bow tying the handles together.

Shiro wasn’t ready to tell him. “Here,” he squeaked, pushing the flowers into Keith’s hands and looking away. “This is for you.”

Keith sniffed the flowers, almost immediately sneezing into them. “No one’s ever brought me flowers before.”

Shiro chewed on his bottom lip, holding his breath as he watched Keith carefully touch each precious bud. “I guess there’s a first time for everything,” he managed to get out.

Keith stepped aside to let him in, still examining the flowers. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet above the sink and filled it with water before stuffing the bouquet in, tissue paper and all. “They don’t really go together, do they?”

“The lady at the shop told me what they meant, and I wrote it down, but I can’t find my notes. I think this one,” he pointed to a lavender aster, “is something like patience.”

“Hmm.” Keith scrutinized the flowers then pulled a scrap of paper out from the bouquet and unfolded it one-handed. “And this one,” he pointed to a similar bloom but with white petals and a blush of pink around the central disk, “is ‘walk with me and hold my hand?’” He raised an eyebrow.

Shiro tried to snatch the list away, but Keith was faster, “Uhm, well…” He made another grab for it and failed again.

“Poppies for pleasure and larkspur for an ardent and-”

The third time, the tips of Shiro’s fingers brushed the back of Keith’s hand. He let go immediately, pulling away. Shiro caught the paper and crushed it in his fist.

“Open heart.” Keith finished, letting his arms fall lifeless to his sides. “But what about the carnations?”

Shiro studied them, searching for a grounding. “They just sort of fill it out, you know? They’re ordinary and uninteresting, but imagine if they weren’t there.”

“I see.”

Shiro felt the flush creep up his neck. He hadn’t planned this out very well, and now that he was here, he wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to.

Keith beat him to it. "Why are you apologizing? That's what this is, isn't it? Why else would you show up at my door with this overwrought love poem? There is something very wrong with this picture. You don't owe me _shit_.” He steadied himself against the counter.

Shiro leaned against the wall behind him. “I never meant-”

“Shiro-”

“Look, Keith, the thing is…”

_We’re running out of time._

Shiro stared at him, braced there expectantly, an electric twitch across his shoulders, weight on one leg, the soft curve of his spine all the way up to the nape of his neck, the spill of dark hair over his shoulders.

_Say it!_

“I love you, and I miss you. We’re not going to be here forever. Who knows; we might not even get to see tomorrow. And if that’s the case, all I want is to spend whatever time I have left with you.”

“Don’t be so fatalistic. We’re not going to die! _You_ aren’t going to die!” Keith tried to brush it off but reached for his cigarettes.

Shiro grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

“I don’t plan on it, but like most things in life, we don’t get that choice. I didn’t choose to be abducted, to give up my career, to find myself coerced into Voltron by that Black Lion. And I certainly didn’t choose to fall into you!”

Shiro watched Keith’s jaw tighten, his fists ball up and unclench involuntarily. He wasn’t sure if the emotion was rage or anguish.

“It just happened. Here.” He thrust the gift bag out between them, changing the focus. _Deflect_. “This is for you, too.”

Warily, Keith took it, but not without a deliberate brush of skin against Shiro’s prosthetic fingers. Carefully, he untied the ribbon and rifled through the red and gold tissue paper, pulling out a small plush hippopotamus.

He held it out, brows squeezed together, lips forming a tight line across his face as he scrutinized the toy, petting it with the same gentle care he gave his cat. “It’s,” he turned his face up to Shiro’s, glassy-eyed, expression still unreadable, “adorable.” He crushed it to his chest.

“So, uh, I guess you like hippos.”

“They’re pretty neat.” He set it back on the counter.

Shiro’s chest heaved, closing the gap between them as he stood up straight, reaching up to touch Keith’s hair as he had so many times, smooth, thick, and coarse. Cheek to cheek they stood, and when Shiro caught his breath again, it was like the rediscovery of something familiar as the sun after having suffered without it through a stormy day. Shiro pulled Keith close. He committed it all to memory, as he’d done so many times, the way Keith’s head fit against his shoulder, the scents of cinnamon with a hint of bergamot, fresh tobacco, burnt paper, the pot of coffee still warming on the counter beside them. He wanted to make sure he would never forget, even if he lost all his memories again.

Looking at him now still sent little fishes swimming up and down his spine and set butterflies a-flutter in his stomach. If he opened his mouth, they might escape in a swarm, yet that was a risk he’d have to take. He lifted Keith’s face, chin tilted up, lips parted in what he only saw as longing, edging ever closer with each furtive breath.

_Kiss him like you mean it._

Hand still laced in inky hair, Shiro hesitated to touch him with the prosthetic, yet Keith had clasped his hands together around Shiro’s back, waiting, a challenge still blazing in his dark eyes. For the first time, Shiro thought he could see the end in those depths, the darkened windows to a soul that burned more brightly than he could have imagined, that had almost blinded him because he’d looked too hard and too long. He finally understood what Keith had meant. Wanting someone implied a conscious choice, an effort to open one’s heart and invite another inside. He didn’t want a dependency so much as a partner, and Keith possessed just enough self-awareness to know this about himself. Unable to fathom love as a need, to him it was a driving storm, fierce, relentless, and wholly devoted to its ultimate course.

At the same time, Kaasan was also right. Keith needed him, he needed Keith, and admitting that betrayed neither weakness nor defeat, only humanity.

Shiro leaned into the crush of lips, soft and pliant against his own. He ran his thumb over Keith’s now closed lids and the brush of his lashes. He felt himself the one to surrender, releasing the tension and pent-up stress of everything life had thrown him.

Grabbing his collar, Keith held him down, tongues mingling. A low moan escaped Shiro's throat and laughter snagged in Keith's from somewhere deep within, husky like the way he spoke after coffee and a smoke.

One finger now to his mouth, Shiro slowly pulled back, materializing the Black Bayard in his grip, his other arm still wrapped tightly around Keith's waist.

An instant later, they stood in the cockpit of the Black Lion.

Keith blinked, stumbling backward before finding his footing. "Is this-" He stepped away to take it in, the spacious console, the wide viewing panel above it.

Shiro nodded. “She can teleport.” His stomach rolled and he tenses, waiting for the nausea from the teleport to pass.

Realization sparked in Keith’s eyes as he put the facts together, then hungrily, he threw himself into the pilot’s seat, gripping the armrests.

To Shiro’s stunned amazement, he thought he saw the seat shift ever so slightly. He rubbed his eyes.

“Hey girl,” Keith murmured, rubbing his palms against the shiny patent padding. Wrenching himself away from his thoughts, he twisted around, frowning as he studied Shiro’s face. “You doing okay? You look really pale.” He sniffed, scratched at his nose, then pulled his hand away to stare at it as if expecting something.

_Blood?_

"Well," Shiro began, "I took some ibuprofen and drank a lot of water before I came over." Being in the Lion helped, Though she had no fix for his hangover, her quintessence a substitute to help stave off the withdrawal.

“You’re shaking.”

Keith wasn’t wrong. Shiro forced himself to stop, burying the shiver as a cold sweat prickled from his skin. “I’m fine.”

Shaking his head, Keith beckoned him near. “You’re not, but you will be.” He brushed his hair from his face then pulled Shiro in closer. “There’s only one reason a man brings another man into his cockpit.”

Shiro smothered a snort of laughter. “You’ve got to stop.”

“I’m serious!” Keith protested. “Besides, it’ll make you feel better.“ He grabbed Shiro’s hand and pressed it to his groin, lifting his hips and exhaling with a flutter of his eyelids. Running his tongue over his teeth, he lounged in the chair, planting one heel up on the seat, legs spread wide. He twisted a finger around a tendril of hair. “Desecrate me,” he commanded.

Shiro ran his thumb along the hardening edge of the bulge in Keith’s pants.

Clothes peeled off over a tangle of arms and legs. Shiro shrugged his prosthetic to the floor and rolled the stocking off, again a twinge of pain festering in his residual limb ran in shuddering bolts up his arm to his shoulder. He leaned forward, elbow in the crook of Keith’s arm, hand flat against the headrest. Keith dragged his foot up the inside of Shiro’s calf.

Pinning Keith in the seat, Shiro tongued the dip between his clavicles, balancing with one knee on the chair, sensing it conform again to accommodate them. He worshipped the body beneath him with his mouth and his hand and every fiber of his very being. Hand slipped around to the small of Keith’s back, Shiro lifted him up, fingertips in the dimples at the base of his spine. Kicking the locking bar on the chair up, the back slammed toward the floor, and he eased Keith down, hot flesh sticking to the padding. Keith grabbed Shiro’s forelock, twisting his fingers in it, as a low moan hung off the edge of his lips, begging to be touched.

Braced on his elbow, Shiro found himself locked in a power struggle, with Keith steering him suggestively down. He fought against it, running his tongue from navel to sternum and kissing his way around and nibbling at a nipple.

“Shiro,” came the impatient call, Keith’s breath sweet and hot as he raised his head.

“I only have one hand.”

“Mmmhmm.”

Keith took it in his, guiding him, tracing the down of his treasure trail.

“You’re peeking.” Shiro kissed the head of his cock, tonguing the exposed tip.

“Kind of hard not to be when you’re expecting some simple gratification.”

Shiro let his hand wander, handling the pliant skin of Keith’s sac and finding his way to the back door, pressing against it with the pad of his thumb.

Keith squirmed.

“I may be sweating every ounce of moisture out of my body right now, but you’d better have something more than spit and courage to pound your way through this.”

“Oh come on, Keith. Don’t. Be. Blue.” Shiro said, each word punctuated by a kiss before he disappeared below the level of the seat.

“You’re officially banned from making jokes during sex.”

Shiro whimpered and paused his caressing to rummage for something beneath the chair. He returned with a tube labeled _Astroglide_ , holding it up for approval. “Let me take you to the stars.”

Keith laughed.

The Black Lion purred.

 

+++

 

_That’s not exactly right. You’re more like the conduit._

Keith held fast, pulling himself up. Still inside him, Shiro rose to his knees, rocking with the ebb and flow of a steady flame.

All he wanted was to feel, the slick of the movement, the sticky pare of flesh to flesh, his hands, fingers scrabbling to keep purchase on Shiro’s shoulders.

Keith thought about the things in his life that he valued most, the things he didn't want to give up, no matter what. The list was longer than he'd expected, but still short, comprised of just one thing.

Yet that one thing encompassed many.

_Home._

Spent from round one, yet far from finished. Keith lay upside down in the chair, one leg straight up against the back of the seat, the other bent over the side, arms dragging down so that his knuckled touched the floor. Saliva bubbles popped between his lips as he absently ran his fingertips through the smear of spunk on his belly.

Reaching up, Shiro twined their fingers together.

They filled the rest of the day with the ambrosia of each other, eventually making their way back to the privacy of the Airstream when the Black Lion finally tired of playing steward.

With the windows open and the dampening cool of early evening filling the interior, Keith laid on the floor in his shorts, smoking the last cigarette he’d managed to find, stale in a crushed pack at the bottom of his shoulder bag. 

“Don’t let me buy more, okay?”

Emerging from the bathroom, Shiro popped the lid on a bottle of ibuprofen, tapped four pills into his palm and downed them dry. “Quitting is hard.”

“You’re doing it though.”

“But I feel terrible. I know I don’t need it, but I _need_ it.” He sat down on the stool in front of the radio receiver.

_I know that feeling._

The radio beeped and buzzed, humming with life. Shiro stared at the dials.

With a sigh, Keith stood up and snuffed his smoke in the sink, only half finished and knowing he would probably regret it later. He unfolded a second stool and dragged it over directly behind Shiro. Taking his seat, Keith wrapped his arms tightly around Shiro's chest from behind.

“Hmm?” Shiro murmured, about to put the headset on.

Keith pressed his forehead against the ridge of Shiro’s spine. “Can you forgive me?” He wanted to say more, yet that was all the apology he managed to get out before his throat seized up to silence him.

“Huh?” Shiro swiveled around, pulling the headset down around his neck and breaking Keith’s hold, taking his hand.

Biting his lip, Keith looked away.

_You deserve far better than me._

Shiro shook his head as if he’d heard that innermost thought.

“I suck at this.”

“Me too,” Shiro said, pulling him close and kissing the top of his head.

Keith should have asked weeks ago but had worked himself into a corner of avoidance, using company and circumstance as an excuse while continuing to push Shiro away. If Shiro gave up first, he would have someone to blame other than himself. He hadn't counted on his own attachment, still convinced the mere idea of soulmates was a stupid concept that only belonged in a hyperbolic love trope. Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't. Shiro wanted his life on a faster track, because, as he had said, he never knew what the next day would bring. That, at least, in a world of harsh realities, was a philosophy Keith could respect.

“Of course I forgive you.”

A constant pinging interrupted then, and Shiro released him, putting the headset back on. After several seconds, he handed it to Keith.

“It’s in English.”

Shiro nodded. “Two days to surrender Voltron. We can’t even form Voltron!”

"We haven't tried." Keith went to the table and grabbed his notepad. "I've been listening to their communiques. It's not a battleship at all, but some kind of a transport vessel. There may be some firing capacity, though my guess is that it is just as understaffed as the ship Lotor made off with."

“You took the Red Lion.”

"True, and if they've been paying attention, they know we have all the Lions. If the Galra destroy the Earth now, they risk destroying them, They're going to want to draw us away to claim Voltron, and if Voltron really is this invincible force everyone seems to think it is, they're either going to call reinforcements here or drive us to them. Or maybe something else altogether."

“I guess it’s time,” said Shiro.

“Yeah.”

“Keith, this is our chance to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Aim high, save the world.”

“You’re just saying that,” he forced a tight smile.

Silence rolled in like a fog, the calm before the storm. Morning coffee burbled hot from the percolator. Red wound herself between Keith’s ankles and pawed at his leg to be picked up.

_Not now._

She cried until he reached down to stroke her back.

If they didn’t go fight, they could lose everything. Or bring the battle here. Neither of them moved or spoke, yet time still marched on, decimating the stillness.

Sunset in winter made him feel old. He studied the way the light descended beyond the terrain, more brilliant and explosive in those moments just before it disappeared. There was something to be said for it, Shiro’s insistence that this was their time to do something, anything, meaningful, yet he hardly remembered what it felt like to have a concrete purpose.

With the orange disc of the sun behind the crest of the mountains, he could see the shadows cast over the topography of the desert terrain once again before the last golden fingers relinquished their hold on the day. He glanced over at Shiro.

_I thought I was going to lose you._

His phone vibrated against the countertop where he had left it charging. Recognizing the number, he answered it on speaker. “Allura.”

Eventually, he'd add her to his contacts.

“Thirty minutes. Los Alamos. Both Lions.” She hung up before he had a chance to reply.

"And so it begins." Shiro mused, slowly raising himself up, stretching in his tiptoes, hands pressed flat against the ceiling.

 

+++

 

“No!How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t want to eat that- that- What the hell is that anyway?”

“Roast beef and potatoes, sir.”

“Looks like dog shit after a couple of chocolates.”

Keith heard the banter from the hall, cringing. The door to the now-familiar break room had been left wide open, and peering inside, he watched his father flip the tray with a precision only a crotchety old man could get away with. The contents covered the sergeant from head to toe, and Keith almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Who had the man pissed off to get stuck with dad duty?

He felt a hand on his hip as Shiro ushered him into the room.

"Akira," Mariko sighed, rubbing her temples. "I raised two boys, and neither one of them was ever as bad as you!" She stood up from the table across the room and catching sight of Shiro and Keith, she waved.

They waved back.

"Hi, Kaasan!" Shiro shimmied past Keith to greet his mom, kissing her cheek and crushing her in a bear hug. He gestured with his eyes for Keith to do the same.

Instead, Keith waited silently by the door for the sergeant to clean up the mess. He had to admit, it looked about as appetizing as his father claimed; he couldn’t blame his old man for refusing the overly processed sludge posing as nourishment.

“Hey, dad.”

“Well, look at what the robot lion dragged in.”

The sergeant shot the old man a sidelong glance of annoyance before taking his leave, slamming Keith hard with his shoulder on the way out.

_Rude._ He tensed and huffed through his teeth, but managed to ignore the obvious provocation to garnered approval from Mariko and his dad.

“Brought you something.” Keith held up a McDonalds carry-out bag, and pulled out a can of Pepsi, making his way over to the end of the sofa beside his father’s parked wheelchair.

The elder Kogane’s face lit up. “Looks like there’s a use for you yet-”

“Akira!” Mariko admonished. “We had this conversation just this afternoon.”

"Oh come-" Kogane senior started.

“No. If you want to have a relationship with your son, the first thing you need to do is treat him with respect and decency. It’s not a joke when you yourself admitted you never have anything nice to say. Let’s go, Takashi.” Mariko Shirogane took her son by the hand and led him toward the door.

Shiro turned to Keith. _“Sorry!”_

Keith watched them go. He'd been counting on Shiro for moral support and now had to make do without. Mongomery had texted, asking him to bring a cheeseburger for his dad, preferably with a Pepsi and not a Coke, and he'd done it, no questions asked. Setting the food on the table, he clasped his hands in his lap and stared at them. "I can leave if you'd prefer."

"I'd like you to stay, ah," the old man gripped the armrests with his arthritic hands, "Keith. May I call you that?"

"I've only been asking all my life. I'm not you, so just let me be me." Keith shut his mouth before more of the pent-up animosity filtered through.

“I’ve never asked you to not be you. I’ve told you to wise up and use that big brain of yours, but that’s not the same thing. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than me and have talent to spare, but I can’t pretend you’re not my child. You come by all your shortcomings honestly, your sharp tongue, your temper,” he paused, “your heart.”

Keith refused to look at him. Until now, he hadn’t put much thought into it, but he wondered if his father’s plea of insanity was what allowed him the privilege of those infrequent visits Keith had always hated.

Twice a year through elementary, middle, and into high school, a social worker would pull Keith out of class, often to a well-meaning teacher explaining to his classmates that his mother had abandoned him with his lunatic dad. He'd suffer silent internal tears the entire trip there and back, listening to the adults around him ask each other what was wrong with him, why were his grades so terrible, why did he keep getting into fights. After his last suspension, he'd ended up in a group home, but in a way, it helped. The bleakness of the institution, oppressive with its stark white cell-like rooms and over-attentive staff helped give him an impetus and focus that had been hard to find. He had been able to pull his grades up just enough that combined with good enough SAT scores, a borrowed application fee, and an ROTC scholarship, he'd earned himself a ticket out.

“Montgomery told me how you got kicked out of the Air Force, by the way.”

“I didn’t get kicked out.”

_Technicality._

“No? Sure sounded like you did.”

Keith refused to look at him, but he knew it came with a raised brow and an expression of disbelief. That particular tone would needle and pry until he’d shout out all the pent-up words he’d meant to keep chained inside. It would tell him the things he’d grown to expect to hear. Stupid, worthless, a waste of breathable air. He braced himself for it, he was an adult, and he felt he should be able to take the abuse and wash it off in the shower. Not that it got any easier.

"I would have decked him too, consequences be damned." Akira Kogane conceded, reaching out to pat Keith awkwardly on the back.

He flinched involuntarily with a ragged exhale of relief, and the old man retreated, pulling his hand away.

"I wasn't going to be an astronaut, so I thought maybe I'll keep on flying planes, but I ruined it like I ruin most things."

“Blah, blah, blah,” Akira babbled in aggravated sing-song. “I can’t hear you for all the garbage coming out of your mouth. What about that Shirogane boy? That’s something you haven’t ruined.”

Keith stared at him in disbelief. “I almost did.”

Akira leaned in, hot breath in his son's ear. "You're glowing," he whispered.

The raw burn colored Keith’s cheeks. He didn’t have to find a mirror to tell, his father’s satisfied smirk, said it all.

"Besides, he's practically unable to keep his hands off you. That's affection right there. He looks at you like he's afraid to look away. He might turn into stardust and never see you again."

“That’s an odd thing to say.”

“We’re all made of dust.” Akira gestured to the bag of food on the table. “Are you going to give me that?” 

"Oh," Keith said, startled, still thinking about Shiro and stardust. "Yeah. Montgomery said you wanted a cheeseburger."

Akira Kogane laughed loud and long. "Clever Lori came through."

“Lori? Oh, Montgomery.” Keith popped the tab on the soda can and pulled a straw from the bag. He dropped it in and handed it over. The Sergeant had already fixed his father’s tray in place.

“Did she tell you I wanted Pepsi too?”

“No, but I know it’s your favorite, so I grabbed a can from vending.” He opened the burger and re-wrapped the paper for a better grip.

Kogane senior slurped down half the soda in one go, then set it carefully down with two hands, toppling it when he reached for the burger.

Keith caught the can upright and set it carefully back on the tray, handing him the burger. “Just, slow down. Okay?”

The old man stared at it, both hands shaking as he steadily raised it to his mouth. He stopped and snapped his jaw shut. “You’re watching me.”

“Yeeeeah,” Keith drawled, “I don’t remember the last time I saw you this coordinated. Or conversational.”

Akira Kogane set the burger down and placed both palms flat on his tray. A slight tremor coursed through his hands, the index finger of his left hand methodically tapping the plastic surface.

Keith watched him study his own movements. Something had changed, or put more precisely, improved. He hadn't cursed or raised his voice.

“Mariko says it’s neurological.”

Keith met his eyes, waiting for him to continue.

“That’s what we’re still doing here. Lori’s idea. Mariko’s working with a specialist out at the labs and they’ve got me on some fancy new drugs. The fog that has been my entire existence for the last twenty some odd years is lifting, but I’m not sure I like what I see.”

“She’s your friend, Dad. Let her help you.”

"I've hurt you, and nothing can undo that damage."

Keith tried to relax back into the sofa. He wouldn’t have taken it this far, but since they were here, why not? The wound would never be fully healed. The one comfort in everything he’d learned about himself and his family was that they’d wanted him. His father had literally taken him and left to raise him alone after his mother had returned to war. Regardless of how it had panned out, his father at least had wanted and loved him.

He wondered if Krolia was still alive and if she thought of him as her child or just something to which she'd contributed a piece of herself. Information. He was like an encyclopedia of Galra secrets, but even he didn't know what those secrets were.

“She loves you.”

"Huh?" Keith twisted around, leaning over the armrest. "How do-"

“You have her knife. She’s the only one who could have given you that.”

“I didn’t say anything! How do you know what I’m thinking?” He hadn’t felt any intrusion, had blocked out the Lions. The only sound in his head was the blood pumping through his veins and the meandering of his thoughts.

“You’re loud. I can’t hear the Lions anymore, all I can hear is you, but I’ve always been able to hear you, even before I ran into that witch with her magical robo-cats.”

“You mean- Is that why this happened to you?”

“I met that Altean lady for the first time in a grocery store when you were three years old, but believe me, I knew all about her long before that. We all did, but Lori didn’t want her poking around. Especially not with the Galra insurgents already here. When she offered me that Black Lion, I was long out a job and couldn’t refuse. The pay was good, and I had this kid to take care of. I guess I just wasn’t suited to handle all that quintessence, so here I am. You know what it’s like living with those Lions speaking inside your head? Can’t talk to them, can’t tune them out, can’t get a wink of sleep or a breath of blessed silence.”

He got it. Everything suddenly made sense, but Keith wasn’t sure if the knowledge made things better or worse.

_What can you do when you aren’t even alone in your own head?_

Keith’s father carefully raised his hands off the tray and took his burger up again, head bent down for that first bite. Chewing thoughtfully, he shifted his eyes to his son and swallowed. “I missed out on so many things, but the one thing I regret the most is that I missed out on you. I’m never going to get that back, and I’m sorry you had to suffer for my mistakes.”

Keith raked his fingers through his hair, holding it back from his face in clenched fists with his eyes closed before letting his hands fall to his sides. "Don't worry about it. You can't change the past." His response felt cold and impersonal, each word carefully measured before he released it into the room.

Akira reached over and weakly pried Keith’s hand away, holding it in his own weak grip. He squeezed, the effort smoothing out the wrinkles from his paper-thin skin. “I know this won’t mean anything to you now, but I’m proud of you.”

"You're right, it's kind of late for that," Keith said, despite the stone that now sat in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed. "But you're here now. We're both here," he looked at his dad, brows furrowed, hardly daring to hope, "Maybe there's a reason for that."

Akira Kogane nodded slowly, silence his companion and his shield.

The Red Lion called to Keith.

“I have to go.” He drew his hand away.

“You take care of Mariko’s boy, now.”

Keith shook his head. “Dad, please-”

"Even a blind man could see it."

Bending over, Keith shook his head, patting his father’s shoulder, smiling sadly, briefly.“They’re waiting for me.”

“Good luck and godspeed.”

 

+++

 

The United States military had no fleet of space-worthy craft. Instead, it possessed a handful of hodgepodge wrecks, collected since the late nineteenth century, repaired and rebuilt on the back of new technology over and over again.

The Galra fighter remained the single in-tact spaceship, and so far, only one person had been able to operate it.

Reconnaissance revealed nothing about the capabilities or the munitions housed on the remaining dreadnought.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” Keith spoke to no one, looking up at the Red Lion, sitting on her haunches in the familiar hangar.

Shiro had heard, though. He gazed up at the five Lions with the same apprehension and wonder with which he had once watched the stars. He felt no sense of impending doom or certain destruction, it was more like an itch that he couldn’t quite reach but wouldn’t go away.

_Me too, Keith, me too._

“We don’t,” Shiro hesitated, a quiet quiver in his voice, each word like an arrow to his own heart, barbs holding it fast. “We don’t have to do this.”

Keith turned on him. “Then who else is going to? This is a goddamned war, Shiro. We are fighting a war, and no one here should know that better than you.”

“Yes, and sometimes in war, you have to make hard choices.”

“Don’t make it sound like a game!”

“You don’t get it, Keith.”

“Listen, Shiro-”

“No, you listen. There is no point in me continuing to fight if I lose the only thing I’m fighting to keep.”

Keith’s eyes widened, the tension left his jaw as he stared in unmasked disbelief, struck by the significance of Shiro’s words. “Yeah, you say that, and what exactly is it you’re trying to save?”

Shiro wrapped an arm around over Keith’s shoulder, drawing him in, face buried in sweat-drenched hair. Hot tears stung his eyes, trailing down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw. It was from the heat, he told himself, but that was a lie.

The bitter, acrid scent of hot metal and fuel clung to Keith’s hair and lingered in Shiro’s nostrils. He tightened his hold.

 

+++

 

The Red Lion twisted, rolled, and tumbled through the hangar opening, her claws catching on the asphalt and popping out great divots as she bounded forward and lifted off into the air.

“I know you’re excited, girl, but we’ve got some work to do yet.”

Reluctance permeated every particle of Keith’s being. It clung to his words. She smelled it on him, sweet and poignant.

_“We’re in this together,”_ she said. _“Whatever happens, it’s going to be okay. I’m with you now.”_

_“I wanted more time.”_

She knew, but it was not hers to give.

 

+++

 

“Activating wavelength enhancement.” The female voice carried through the cockpit, speaking in what Allura called “High Altean.”

Keith groaned. “Do you have to talk like that, Red? I don’t like it.”

The Red Lion roared in reply, and a blue-tinted shield fell over the screen. The mystery bombardment revealed itself. Laser beams from the battleship arced through the air toward them, but at least now he could see them, “wavelength enhancement” indeed.

Keith took the lead and pulled her right, letting her dash through the shots, like dodging drops of autumn rain.

“It’s all on me. I’ll head it off.”

“Good thinking, Keith.” Shiro came loud and clear through the mic. “Hunk, Lance, Pidge, follow me.”

“Lance, Hunk, stay close!” Pidge instructed, catching up to Shiro. “My invisibility has some range and should cover all of us.”

The Black Lion soared past and blinked out of sight. Keith checked his radar, still tracking the other Lions through the cloaking. A blast to the head sent him reeling backward, and it took all his concentration to right his Lion, guiding her back into the fray.

Before him, the belly of the hull unfurled as it opened like a rose to the morning sun. Within the structure of the ship, all he could see was the device. Rotating rings generated energy, heat unfurled off a point of convergence, its glow a bright white ball. The entire ship had been built around it.

He almost laughed at the hilarity. The idea that destroying a planet would take something so massive when he was sure the United States alone had enough power in nuclear weapons of mass destruction to make the Earth uninhabitable. Even accounting for energy transfer and conversion, the idea that aliens would need something significant as this, an entire city could have fit inside the depths of the ship with room to spare.

Or did they truly intend to obliterate Earth?

Pulling back on the steering, the Red Lion reared, then dropped, avoiding the onslaught of fire.

Keith transferred his view to the other four.

“Unimpressed,” Pidge said impassively.

“It’s like they didn’t expect a fight, though. This bombardment is coming from the battleship alone. I haven’t seen a single fighter.” Keith steadied the Red Lion and took a shot at a lower canon. “I don’t even think they’re really aiming. They’re just trying to annoy us.”

“Noted,” Shiro replied. “If we can get through this weak spot in the particle barrier, perhaps one of us can slip inside for recon.”

Panels of the ship separated and folded back as it moved into position.

“Hey, guys,” Keith trailed off, keeping an eye on the device as it edged forward.

The ship shuddered as it locked into place and the firefight ceased. A new frequency hailed his communication unit. He patched it through, a new face appearing on a panel to his right.

“Paladins of Voltron, this is Commander Zubek of the Komar Deferential. Our device is poised to extract the life-force of this M-class planet. Surrender the Lions now, and we will leave this solar system.”

The commander’s scripted ultimatum came through loud and clear, in a language they all understood.

“That honestly doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Hunk muttered.

“No,” Shiro spoke heavily into his mic. “These people destroy worlds. Giving them what they want now will just delay the inevitable.”

Allura patched in from Earth with a slight delay. “Paladins? Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Shiro replied.

“Good. You’re going to have to form Voltron.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Keith asked, exasperated.

“Feel the quintessence of the Lions, your bonds with each other-”

“You’ve never done this, have you?” Lance interrupted.

“Uhhh,” she faltered.

Something felt off, more so than it had going in. Keith hit the comms button, addressing the Galra commander. "I think not." About to turn it off again, he had an idea. "But since you're here and you've brought it up, I feel I can safely speak for all of us when I say we'd like you to leave. Close up your tin can and hightail it out of here. Perhaps straight into a star - but not our star; I don't want to clean up after you."

“Keith!” Shiro admonished, amidst the grumbling from the other ends of their private line.

“Chastise me later,” he replied, “But something is wrong here. I-”

A rolling wave passed through him, the Red Lion bobbing with the swell and dip of its passage.

“What was that?” Hunk asked.

“My frequency recorder classified it as a sonic pulse,” Pidge replied. “Aaaaand I just lost cloaking.”

From the point of the device facing Keith down, the brilliant white globe slowly throbbed to life as if charged from hibernation with each subsequent wave. The concentric rings began to spin, like a turbine around their central axis. Crackles of lightning tore through the air. Wrenching himself from its hypnotic light, Keith dodged a new burst of power to regroup with the team.

The commander’s voice returned. “This is your final notice, surrender now.”

“What are you, the space police?” Pidge patched through.

Keith turned off the blubbering reply.

Around the opposite side of the ship, the Black Lion blasted the shield barrier, joined by Blue, Yellow, and Green. Bracing against the output, Keith edged Red into position and unleashed her fury, like a breath of fire joining the elements of air, water, earth, and nature.

Nothing.

A new barrage fell around them, ricocheting off the back of his Lion. Gritting his teeth, Keith forced her closer in.

“It’s not working!” Pidge cried.

“And they can see us now,” Shiro said.

The Red and Blue Lions turned to face the fire from above.

“Keith, take right. Lance, go left,” Shiro directed.

“This is pointless,” Keith muttered.

“You have - fo- Vo -tron!” Allura’s voice broke up over the dying signal, blocked by the ship.

Hunk yelled, his Lion breaking away in stunned repose. “She’s not responding!”

“Use your quintessence!” Allura instructed.

The Yellow Lion sparked back to life as she soared across Keith’s screen, ramming the shield with her armored flank to no effect.

From the open end of the ship, Keith could see the strong beam continuing to amass power and slowly edging toward the blue planet.

“We have to do this! Keith, Lance, to my right. Pidge, Hunk, left,” Shiro commanded. “Form Voltron!”

He reached for them, felt the quickening in the marrow of his bones and the heat of blood rush through his veins. The fingers of his mind grabbing for whatever he could. Lance to one side, Shiro at the other. The pressure built through his sinuses, bursting when the Lions roared as one, a sound that reverberated through his skull as it rattled in his helmet.

_Red._

_Blue._

_Black._

_Green._

_Yellow._

Each Lion’s aura radiated, rays apart like the points of a star.

“ _Or the petals of a flower_ ," he thought, reminded of the bouquet still in a glass on his counter at home and the single white cosmos flower. The burst of color at the center, like a blazing star. He held on to his Lion with the force of his will, feeling his bond grow, sensing the others as they did the same.

Blood rushed to his head and trickled down from his nose, dripping off his chin inside his helmet.

He was everything and everywhere at once. The feet and legs of his Lion folded in, tail retracting as she transformed her shell to something else entirely, feeling the smooth glide of pistons, and the mechanics forming the shoulder joint of the mech’s right arm.

The world collapsed to a dense blackness.

“Shiro?”he called. “Pidge? Hunk? Lance?”

No one answered, but he thought he could hear the murmurs of the Lions. They existed apart from him, here and not within his mind.

“Red?”

He had to be somewhere inside her, or within their conscious space.

Keith closed his eyes in concentration, reaching out and listening.

“Oh no, no, no, no! This morning I was on Earth, this afternoon, I flew into space in a giant robot lion, and now I’m-” Hunk started as Keith’s hand touched his shoulder.

The pitchy darkness faded to charcoal haze, lifting and shifting subtly lighter, enough for him to see shape and form. When Hunk turned around, his expression shifted from surprise to relief, to comprehension.

“It’s okay. It’s just me,” Keith said.

“You really don’t like cake, do you?”

Keith opened his mouth then closed it again, deciding not to speak, shaking his head in amusement.

“Dude, that was _you_ peeking in my pockets and spying on me!” Lance punched Keith lightly in the shoulder.

“Don’t even start,” Keith snapped back. “I can read you like an open book.”

“Oh yeah? Well-”

“Okay,” Pidge appeared between them, interrupting their banter. “but somebody got fucked today.”

Shiro’s mouth fell agape. “Pidge! That’s personal!”

She grinned. “Yeah, I thought so.” She winked at Keith.

It was then he realized no one had spoken a single word.

Almost immediately, Keith found himself in a chair between Shiro at his left and Lance to his right, the view on the console before him the same as it was through the eyes of his Lion. They stared at each other as the room constructed itself. Gridlines spreading beneath their feet and solidified as the support beams of the walls materialized around them. The ceiling closed in last, a low vault enclosing them.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Shiro shouted as a swinging fin-like structure headed straight for them.

“Whoa!” Pidge reached for her panel, Bayard in hand. She jammed it into the blinking hub beneath her panel, and a shield materialized on the main screen. Keith swung the red arm back, while the legs widened their stance.

Cacophony filled the air, voices speaking over and around one another as another wave of fire fell like heavy rain upon the body of Voltron.

They were inside the chest cavity, and they had to fight before them learned to even crawl.

Limbs akimbo, the robot flailed about. Keith’s connection to the other Paladins slipped, and he felt himself thrust again into darkness.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. In. Out.

_“Red?”_

He called to her again, but she was gone

Another powerful hit rocked him, and the Lions threatened to separate, their colors sifting in and out at the periphery of his vision.

“Keith!”

Shiro grabbed his hand and holding fast, he reached for Lance. A budding warmth filled him, overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite, like time and space, where everything is all, and all becomes again one. Keith caught Lance by the wrist, and they were once again transferred onto the bridge.

He fell hard into his chair, looking around through a miasmic haze of dense color and pulsating light with no apparent origin. Shiro was still there, Lance at his right. Pidge appeared to Shiro's left, then Hunk came into focus. All the colors merged to white, obscuring his vision.

And then they were one.

The reality outside the robot re-created itself like a holographic projection before them, the ship loomed large, preparing to fire.

Voltron kicked at the damaged energy barrier, weakening the point of access before slicing through and cracking the dreadnought open like an egg, violet light emanating from within. The ship creaked and rocked as Voltron tore through the reactor rings of the device with the strong jaws of its hands, the generating power dissipating through the cosmic haze.

A voice obscured through static and distance yelled something through a radio buried deep within the consciousness of memory. A circle of sigils opened directly below the ship, a nebulous slurry of glimmering dust spewed outward from the roiling center as it slowly sank through.

Voltron roared, struggling against the twisted metal to push away from the wreckage.

_Do not go through!_

Drawn in with the ship, feet touched the surface of the disc, feet that could no longer feel or move. Each part edged its way in, legs followed by, chest compressed in the tight vacuum, arms, head.

Everything ceased to exist as the force of the wormhole ripped their very molecules and atoms apart,reassembling them instantaneously on the other side as if by magic.

When Keith came to, all was silent. He fixed his gaze on the panel before him. Outside, an entire Galra fleet had gathered, ready for battle.

_It was a bluff, all of it._

He couldn’t breathe. Like waking from a dead slumber before his body was ready, he found himself aware, processing information, but stricken by a momentary paralysis.

_Breathe!_

Panic crept in as Keith struggled to will his body into submission, and then it clicked; this was how he was fated to die, drowning in his own blood collected in his windpipe from his bloody nose.

_No!_

Awareness and time synced up as he frantically popped his helmet off and threw it aside. He sucked in as much air as he could, feeling his lungs contract, suddenly wheezing and coughing up blood, leaving a spatter of viscous red across his console. He snorted back more, swallowing it, wiping the blood from his face.

Air.

He inhaled and exhaled, struck by the notion that he easily could, letting the momentary panic subside. He smeared his hair back from his eyes, leaving a trail of sweat and blood across his forehead.

Everyone screamed for each other. It hadn’t just been him.

Shiro slowly picked up his head, and Lance groaned. Hunk gasped. Pidge's shuddering breath echoed through their helmets.

Flipping his visor up, Shiro stared wide-eyed out into the seemingly endless fleet. “Shit.”

Keith heard him, but his mouth hadn’t moved. Although still separate, they remained connected. Voltron took a defensive stance as they assessed the situation.

“Where are we?” Pidge asked, immediately checking the navigation.

“Allura?” Lance pinged her on the communication screen. “Allura?”

Pidge’s fingers flew across the tempered screen. “Voltron knows where we are, but I don’t. I’ve never even seen a map- wait. This looks like one of the charts I pulled off the battleship!”

Hunk leaned over his console, worry tracing the lines between his brows. “The stars are wrong. I can’t tell what’s what!”

“That’s ‘cause we’re not even in our galaxy anymore!” Pidge replied.

“I-LEFT!” Shiro shouted, noting the incoming squadron heading directly toward them.

Pidge’s shield materialized on the left arm of the robot and Voltron pulled in defensively to block the onslaught, rolling aside. Lance took a knee, crouching protectively in wait.

The burst of fire died in a line before them as the ships pulled up a full ninety degrees.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa!” Lance yammered. “What was that?”

“I’m not sure, I-” Shiro replied, his words clipped short by what looked like a figure approaching, parting the ranks of the Galra militia as it floated slowly toward them, it’s menacing bulk an intimidating presence as it closed in.

They heard the call, picked up over the radio and translated. “Stay back! Voltron is mine. Only I can reclaim the Black Lion.”

“Zarkon.” Shiro stared, riveted to the screen, back rigid against his chair.

"Surrender!" A rattling brush of air popped and hissed from the speaker as a deep baritone breathed through the mic. On the screen, an armored encasement in deep mauve rose from below, with cylindrical canisters filled with a bubbling liquid jutting from the back shoulders of his armor and set beside them, articulated wings like the legs of a spider curled up to form a cage around the head. A weapon formed in its hand, with the telltale purple glow of Galra technology.

“NEVER!” Shiro yelled.

Following suit, Keith let out a battle cry, jamming his Bayard into the slot, twisted and locked it in place. Spears of red lightning sparked from his hand. A sword formed in Voltron’s right fist, and Keith drove the arm, elbow across the chest to block the swipe aimed at them.

Weight forward into their opponent, Shiro punched the thrusters, Lance and Hunk stabilizing the mech. Voltron’s sword met the honed edge of Zarkon’s as the two titans came together in a great crash. Where the blades met, friction set the metal to an intense glow.

Keith held his ground, sensing the strain on the quintessence of the living machine, but backed by the four beside him, and sustaining the energy flow as best they could. “We can’t hold this much longer!”

Shiro clenched the Black Bayard in his right hand. Silver-white and gold threads of quintessence flowed back out through the aperture as he slotted it in place, twining around his arm, the brilliant fuchsia matching the aura surrounding their opponent.

Voltron turned aside, causing Zarkon to stumble forward, tottering through space. He faced them and readied the charge, white heat from the thrusters at his feet. Barrelling ahead, the emperor grunted. His fleet surrounded them, waiting for a word they would never receive at the cost of pride.

They came together and apart, fists flying in a sparring frenzy, blocked by swords, footwork saved by the lack of atmosphere. Lance and Hunk plugged in their Bayards, adding to Voltron’s arsenal of tricks. A high kick to the chest with a battle cry from Lance’s sonic wave generator sent Zarkon tumbling backward, but the Paladins’ green hands weren’t so capable as to keep themselves upright either.

“Give it up!” the emperor commanded.

_No._

Hunk took a pot shot with the laser array from his weapon, grazing their opponent’s shoulder and shattering one of the canisters.

A strangulated noise fed audibly through their communication link.

Beneath their feet, a circle similar to that which had drawn them to this place began to form, drawing itself in tendrils and curls of liquid light. Sigils and symbols formed on a plane just wide enough to encompass their form, shiny and pink, darkening to a deep violet as it solidified. Keith felt it from somewhere far away, a thread of electromagnetic energy, raising the hair in goosebumps on his arms as it struggled to reach out through the aether.

The space within the ring folded in on itself, pulling from the rim to a pinpoint of velvety dark in the center.

They struggled to keep from falling in. Lance and Hunk braced the feet against the edges, as Keith and Pidge raised the sword two-handed, burning with the electric light of their Bayards, coalescing to a white-hot flame.

"Now!" Shiro screamed over the creaking of the metal joints.

The flaming sword carved into the armor through the shoulder. Zarkon staggered back from the blow. His body lay exposed; they could see his form within his mecha.

“Go!” a familiar voice commanded, “I cannot keep this open forever.”

Keith thought he caught a glimpse of Lotor’s silvery white hair on the communication’s screen before the world blacked out and Voltron fell backward through the wormhole, swallowed up through the singularity.

The giant robot shook and rattled against the burn of gravity as it entered Earth’s atmosphere and picked up speed. Keith’s head knocked against the seat, and he saw the celestial circle behind them, sigils fizzling out, the edges seemingly burned into space faded to gray-blue as the open sky above the New Mexican desert closed over them.

Voltron crumpled on the ground, streams of light running along the edges of the cabin interior.

_Earth._

_Home._

_Shiro!_

Keith grabbed Shiro's wrist, feeling around the cold metal as if checking for signs of life. He'd built himself up to it, with Shiro's meanderings and premonitions of limited time and a grave reluctance that had been furiously gnawing at the back of his thoughts.

Shiro smiled, a single breath escaping his lips as he reached over and took Keith’s hand, prying it off his prosthetic and lacing their fingers together. He squeezed.

“We made it.”

What Keith heard was somewhat different.

_“I’m still here.”_

A skirmish, that’s all this was, and something told Keith their fight had only just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real home stretch! I'm excited to finally wrap this up, but also reluctant to put it out here. One more chapter to go!


	14. God From the Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened next...

And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_ (Act II, Scene 2)

 

+++

 

Keith hip-checked Shiro into the diner bench, sliding in after him, one hand on his thigh. He squeezed and rubbed his palm down the inside of Shiro’s leg from groin to knee before pulling out his hand and picking up a menu.

A crimson flush colored Shiro’s cheeks as he clasped his own hands together on the table.

From the opposite side, Pidge peered over the top of her menu, glancing from one to the other. “You’re late.”

Keith shrugged.

Shiro grunted acknowledgment but said nothing. Lance passed him a menu, but he refused. “You know I always get the same thing.”

“Maybe today you’ll try something new?” Lance threw his hands up. “You never know.”

“Denny’s All American Slam is so good, though. Why would I try something new when I can get what I already know I love?”

_You tried me._

Keith tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear. It didn’t stay.

“Somebody needs a haircut,” Lance jibed, watching as Keith attempted to blow the shaggy fringe away from his eyes and off his forehead.

“Nope.”

“It looks about the way it did the first time I saw you.”

Keith closed his menu and folded his arms over it on the table, tilting his head to one side. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lance pretended to examine his nails, with a slight lift of his shoulders. “It’s a mullet.”

“Uh huh. I don’t think you know what a mullet is.” He gathered his hair into a messy ponytail, then pulled an elastic off his wrist to secure it in place.

Shiro snorted.

Pidge glanced aside.

Hunk absently picked up the dessert list. “A mullet is a mullet.”

Keith rolled his eyes.

Allura joined them, pulling a chair up to the end of the table.

“Okay,” Lance slammed his hands down flat on the sticky Formica. "We're all here now, so what's next?"

“What do you mean, ‘what’s next?’” Hunk asked.

“We saved the world; we’re like superheroes, so, you know, what’s next?” Lance looked around the table.

"Superheroes?" Allura wrung the word out and hung it up to dry, wholly unconvinced. "No one even knows who you are. All the media has seen of the "sensational five pilots" are your uniforms and the back of Keith's head because apparently, he can't keep his helmet on."

“I couldn’t breathe,” Keith half-heartedly protested.

“Actually, we should talk about that,” Pidge said, looking from Keith to Allura. “I think the quintessence makes us sick, and I don’t mean a harmless sick that we’ll just get used to.”

“I’m fine.” Hunk leaned over the table on his elbows.

“You’re the only one.” Lance shoulder-checked his friend.

Allura sighed. “If I can get the medical bay on my ship up and running, we might be able to work out a solution. Coran is still working to expand the auxiliary power on our ship, but the fact of the matter is we need to repair the central power core and to do that I need a new energy crystal. Right now we can afford the time to examine the risk and eliminate it. The five of you went MIA for _three weeks_ , and that’s nothing to the Galra.”

“But significant enough you thought we were gone,” Hunk said, staring unfocused at the menu.

“We had no choice but to tell your families,” Allura added.

Keith had not expected the multiple messages his dad had left on his voicemail; someone had given the old man his number. Probably Montgomery, but he didn’t want to speculate. He still needed to return the calls.

The ice cubes in Pidge’s soda bobbed in a spiral as she stirred them with her straw. “We weren’t trained; we did the best we could with the resources we had.”

"Only now we have Voltron,” Keith sighed. “It's not just a damaged Black Lion and some change anymore. Zarkon's fleet will be back. Sooner rather than later. They could have taken us out easily; they would have if Lotor hadn't intervened!"

Hunk nodded in agreement. “Exactly. What is that guy up to? Why did he help us escape? I get it, he thinks of this planet as his responsibility, but we’re not exactly on the same team.”

“We’re not exactly on different teams either,” Shiro pointed out.

“I have a trace on him. Remember that device I gave Keith? I got the Green Lion on it now. She’s able to track that ship wherever it goes.” Pidge grinned then grimaced, “Just don’t ask me how.”

Joy came over to greet them, pushing the cat-eye glasses up her nose with her pencil eraser before jotting down their orders.

Allura leaned in over the table, her voice low but clear. “Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the universe. That is why Zarkon wants it. _Voltron_ is the only thing that is capable of stopping him. You saw what they were about to do to Earth.”

“And that was a bluff! Look,” Keith bit his lip, thinking, “None of us asked for this, and while there’s a part of me that wants to call it in, I hear the lions pleading, begging us to take them back to the front, to end this. And I...” He trailed off.

_What?_

He’d finally found his home, and it was here.

Shiro leaned over, nose in his hair, leaving a kiss at his temple. He reached for Keith’s hand and laced their fingers together.

“Where do we begin?” Keith finished, letting his shoulders fall slack. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to be selfish, to stay in his cozy camper and spend the nights stargazing next to Shiro. He found he no longer cared so much about former dreams and aspirations, yet was making new ones as they spoke. His perspective had changed, and he thought he might even be better for it.

"Well," Allura took a tablet out of her bag and powered it on. “I think the priority should be getting my ship and the Lions off this rock."

"I don't think that matters," Pidge said. "As you pointed out just a few minutes ago, our families are here, and the Galra imperial forces know that we're from this planet. They can always use that card against us. We don’t have a defense system against an extraterrestrial threat.“

“That’s why we have to mobilize,” Allura said.

“Isn’t there anyone else who might help us?” Hunk asked.

“Yeah,” Keith said, “What about the Galra insurgents? Why did they leave? I bet Montgomery knows how to contact them. We can’t be the only ones trying to fight back, and we certainly can’t do it with our current resources. They nearly crushed us!”

Shiro shifted in his seat, leaning on his elbows over the table. “The only way we’re going to be able to pr-”

His words cut abruptly short as he winked out of existence.

Keith’s palm hit the table, Shiro’s shirt crumpled to the seat, and his prosthetic arm slid to the floor with a loud crash.

“Shiro?” He spoke softly, sifting through clothes still warm with body heat. Shiro’s socks remained tucked inside his shoes, hidden under the hem of his pants. His wallet, still tucked in a back pocket, slid off the bench with the rattling clink of loose coins.

Picking up his head, Keith looked around the table, at the faces slack-jawed with surprise, even as his heart fell like a great weight and shattered at his feet. Keith stood up, the table skidding forward as he did.

“SHIRO?!” he called again, frantic as he looked around the restaurant.

Shiro was gone.

 

+++

 

**One Year Later…**

 

_Shiro,_

_You’re away, and it’s killing me._

_I bet you never thought I’d be the one to say that, or maybe you did. You know me better than I know myself sometimes._

_So what happens now? There’s been no sign of anything on the Galra front. As far as Allura can tell, they’ve left our solar system completely. Still, nothing’s back to normal, but nothing about this place ever quite was, was it? Hunk’s planning to open his own auto shop. Lance is doing whatever it is he does. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Pidge got herself one of those fancy IT jobs for a big tech company. They want her out in California, but I don’t think she really wants to move. I hope she doesn’t; I’d miss her. Allura and Coran have almost finished the repairs to their ship._

_I see them all several times a week. It’s not the same, though._

_I know you’re going to ask about me, but I haven’t done anything worthwhile, so I’m not sure what to say._

_Actually, that’s not entirely true. I spent some time reviewing my application and am sending it to the space program again. Laugh all you want. I want to wear one of those sexy blue jumpsuits with the NASA patch on the sleeve and my name embroidered over my heart in gold. I’ll never be a poster child, but who knows, maybe I’ll have a chance this time._

_It’s something to do, I guess. Voltron doesn’t exist without you, you know._

_Part of me wishes we hadn’t done it, any of it. Let the planet be demolished. Let the Komar turn the entire mass into a pool of boiling magma. Let it become another wasteland orbiting the sun. Human life is gone, like that, in the blink of an eye, and no one is left to care._

_I didn’t believe you when you said your time was short, that you were just a little out of time and space, and that eventually, it was all going to catch up with you. I didn’t want to hear it, so I didn’t. I still don’t understand, not really. I’m probably just being selfish._

_Allura says we’ll be okay, that we’ll get by, and I’ll get on. I know I’m still young, but I feel so old._

_I keep trying to convince myself that there is no higher cause, no greater honor than to fight for those who cannot protect themselves._

_But at what price?_

_There’s nothing left for me without you. There’s nothing worth saving without you._

_I still see you in my dreams, and sometimes I wake up alone thinking that your arms are around me. I reach for your hand, but it's not there. There's a cold space in my bed. Even the cats won’t sleep there._

_You were mine, and I didn’t even realize it. I think about that a lot._

_Grief changes a person. Some will say you have to pick yourself up, get over it, move on, but I don’t think you ever really can. Everything in life becomes a part of you, whether you want it to or not. It changes your experience, makes it richer, gives you some character development, although I didn’t really want any more of that. Time makes the hurt lessen, and I have to let it, adapt, rebuild._

_It’s just so exhausting._

_I can’t catch a break, or maybe I have, but this doesn’t feel like the way it’s supposed to be._

_“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”_

_I used to think Tennyson was bullshit, but it’s not. I know that now._

_I wouldn’t trade a single moment of my time spent with you. For anything._

 

_I love you._

 

 

Keith stabbed at the notepad with his pen, methodically scribbling through each line, the nib tearing through the paper.

_Stupid. Sappy._

He slammed it down, shattering the plastic casing, and put his cigarette out right onto the tabletop, grinding the ember into the melting plastic laminate. Red and Kuro peered at him from the sink where they had been sleeping, curled up together like two halves of a whole. Ripping the page clean off his pad, he growled his frustration, crumpling it up and chucking it the length of the camper. The cats watched as the wad of paper bounced off the screen divider separating the kitchen from the bedroom.

Red howled.

Exhaling loudly, Keith fell back into the cushions and closed his eyes.

_Me too, cat, me too._

Inside, he felt as if some unknown force had cleaved him in two, his bifurcated heart beating arrhythmically against the separate halves of his ribcage, somehow continuing to exist. How long would it be like this?

He cursed himself for all the things he did not do, for every ungrateful moment, for pushing Shiro away, for being too wrapped up in his own shortcomings to even notice when no one else cared, for never saying those three little words.

Whoever had decided grief came in stages did not know grief. The biting sadness, the rage, desperation, feelings came over him when he least expected them, stayed an indeterminate amount of time, then left as suddenly as they had arrived. Most of the time he had no words for it.

Like he had no words now, only the strangulated noises he made when trying unsuccessfully not to cry.

Keith ran a hand through his hair and pushed himself to his feet. The hour was late, and he needed to try at least to get some sleep. Besides, his pillow didn’t care if he covered it in tears; it never judged him. As he passed his phone, charging by the sink, an email alert chimed, stopping him in his tracks. Only one account was tagged, and that account was dead.

He looked at the screen, holding his breath. The notification banner covered the center of his lock screen; he hadn’t imagined it.

Curious, he opened the app.

 

 **T. “Shiro” Shirogane** 0122 AM

[no subject]

KERBEROS 2098

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when you base an entire narrative around the ridiculous notion that when something gets lost, it’s really just stuck in the space-time continuum and will eventually catch up.
> 
> I drafted this back around the time I wrote Chapter 6, but I’d always intended to have Shiro rapture and return to quintessence. Whether or not he stays there is another matter entirely.
> 
> Keith deserved something beautiful, but sometimes life just sucks. On the other hand, now he can go on adventures in search of Space Angel Shiro.
> 
> (I’m gonna be real here though. While I’ve composed bits and pieces of a possible Part II, it’s highly unlikely I’m actually going to write it. That doesn’t mean I’m not having lots of fun thinking about morally gray Lotor coming along for the ride and everyone bringing their cats, flying through wormholes to different realities, meeting the canon cast and being horrified by their counterparts and each other’s, etc.)
> 
> September 29, 2016, is the date on my very first draft, and I can hardly believe I’ve made it. I don’t ever want to post a work as a chapter fic again if I haven’t finished all chapters ahead of time. It’s so hard to keep up with what I wrote, oh, two years ago and re-reading some of that has filled me with severe first-hand embarrassment.
> 
> It was pretty ambitious for me to even start this. I hadn’t been seriously interested in writing in over a decade (no exaggeration, I am as old as I made the characters I wrote about). Getting into that mindset again was harder than I’d thought it would be and there were so many times I wanted to drop my laptop out the window and throw in the towel.
> 
> All I can say is that I hope I did my project some justice. 
> 
> Thank you for reading~ y'all are the best!


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